The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in South America
31 places in 9 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful water wonders in South America are Easter Island (Chile), Laguna Colorada (Bolivia) and Iguaçu Falls (Brazil). The list covers 31 lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches in 9 countries. Brazil has the most, with 8. Last updated 13 October 2026.
South America's waters are shaped by two great structures. The Andes, still rising along the Pacific edge, trap salt lakes, mineral-tinted lagoons and crater lakes on a high plateau thousands of metres above the sea, where thin air and strong sun turn the water red, green or mirror-white. To the east, ancient tablelands and the plateaus of the Guiana Shield end in sheer escarpments, and the rivers that run off them fall in some of the tallest and most powerful waterfalls on Earth.
Angel Falls in Venezuela drops from the summit of Auyán-tepui as the highest uninterrupted waterfall in the world, while Kaieteur Falls in Guyana pours a much larger river over a single dramatic drop. The Iguaçu Falls, on the Iguazu River, spread across a horseshoe of rainforest in hundreds of separate cascades. In Colombia, Caño Cristales is a river streaked red, yellow and green by aquatic plants clinging to its rocky bed.
On the Altiplano, Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is the largest salt flat in the world and becomes a vast mirror when covered by a thin layer of rain. Nearby, Laguna Colorada is stained red by algae and dotted with flamingos, and Laguna Verde shines green at the foot of Licancabur. In Chile, Laguna Miscanti and Lake Chungará reflect volcanoes in deep blue water, and in Ecuador the crater lake of Quilotoa glows green inside a collapsed volcano. Huacachina in Peru is a small oasis ringed by high dunes, and far out in the Pacific, Easter Island preserves the stone moai of the Rapa Nui.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Easter Island | Island | Chile | |
| 2 | Laguna Colorada | Lake | Bolivia | |
| 3 | Iguaçu Falls | Waterfall | Brazil | |
| 4 | Angel Falls | Waterfall | Venezuela | |
| 5 | Salar de Uyuni | Salt flat | Bolivia | |
| 6 | Laguna Miscanti | Lake | Chile | |
| 7 | Quilotoa | Volcanic crater lake | Ecuador | |
| 8 | Kaieteur Falls | Waterfall | Guyana | |
| 9 | Laguna Verde | Lake | Bolivia | |
| 10 | Huacachina | Oasis | Peru | |
| 11 | Caño Cristales | River | Colombia | |
| 12 | Lake Chungará | Lake | Chile | |
| 13 | Bartolomé Island | Island | Ecuador | ✓ |
| 14 | Gocta Cataracts | Waterfall | Peru | |
| 15 | Kicker Rock (León Dormido) | Stack | Ecuador | |
| 16 | Meeting of Waters (Manaus) | River | Brazil | |
| 17 | Cuicocha | Volcanic crater lake | Ecuador | |
| 18 | Cachoeira da Fumaça | Waterfall | Brazil | |
| 19 | Gruta do Lago Azul | Cenote | Brazil | |
| 20 | San Rafael Lagoon | Lagoon | Chile | |
| 21 | Moconá Waterfalls | Waterfall | Argentina | |
| 22 | Isla Incahuasi | Island | Bolivia | |
| 23 | Peñol–Guatapé Reservoir | Reservoir | Colombia | |
| 24 | Baía do Sancho | Beach | Brazil | |
| 25 | Pailón del Diablo | Waterfall | Ecuador | |
| 26 | Prata River | River | Brazil | |
| 27 | Poço Encantado | Cenote | Brazil | |
| 28 | Laguna 69 | Lake | Peru | |
| 29 | Petrohué Waterfalls | Waterfall | Chile | |
| 30 | Humantay Lake | Lake | Peru |
01 Easter Island
Chile27.120° S 109.350° W
Image by 3282700 from Pixabay The island's popular reputation as a case study in self-destruction — a society that felled every tree and collapsed into civil war before Europeans arrived — has taken a beating from more recent research. Radiocarbon dates now show statue-building continued steadily for roughly three centuries and that the population was still large and organised when the first Dutch ships anchored in 1722.
Did you know? The nearest inhabited land, Pitcairn Island, is about 2,075 km away, and the Chilean coast lies some 3,500 km to the east.
02 Laguna Colorada
Bolivia22.199° S 67.781° W
Image by TravelCoffeeBook from Pixabay Scattered across that red water are white islands that look like salt but aren't — they're borax, sodium borate deposits left behind by ancient geothermal activity in the basin. It's the same mineral used industrially in detergents and glass manufacturing, occurring here as a natural landscape feature rather than something mined.
Did you know? Its waters, fed mainly by the Sulor River, are rich in sodium chloride, borates, sulfates and diatomite, with a pH that can swing from about 5.3 to 9.0.
03 Iguaçu Falls
Cataratas do Iguaçu
Brazil · 21.2 km from Foz do Iguaçu25.695° S 54.437° W
Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz) · CC BY-SA 4.0 The falls' erosion has a rhythm you can put a number on. Garganta del Diablo — the Devil's Throat — is a U-shaped chasm that swallows roughly half the entire river's flow through an 82-metre drop, and it keeps eating into the basalt: water undercuts the resistant caprock, hollowing a cavern beneath it until the unsupported rock above collapses, and the whole gorge creeps upstream by about a metre every decade.
Did you know? At about 2.7 kilometres, the falls are more than twice as wide as Niagara and much wider than Victoria Falls.
04 Angel Falls
Salto Ángel
Venezuela5.970° N 62.536° W
JhonnyCatanho · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Pemon people call it Kerepakupai Merú, the waterfall of the deepest place. The English name comes from Jimmie Angel, an American pilot who flew over the falls on 16 November 1933 while searching for a valuable ore deposit. In 1937 he returned and tried to land on top of the tepui; the wheels of his monoplane sank into the marshy ground, and he and three companions, his wife among them, spent eleven days walking down off the plateau.
Did you know? The 979 m total includes about 400 m of sloping cascades and rapids and a final 30 m plunge below the main free fall.
05 Salar de Uyuni
Bolivia20.333° S 67.700° W
Image by WaSZI from Pixabay What you cannot see is more consequential than what you can. Under that white crust sits a brine reservoir holding an estimated 50–70% of the world's known lithium reserves — the metal in almost every phone and EV battery on Earth.
Did you know? The rocky islands in its centre are the tops of ancient volcanoes once drowned by a prehistoric lake, crusted with fragile coral-like deposits and fossil algae.
06 Laguna Miscanti
Chile23.725° S 67.765° W
Godot13 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The lake is young in geological terms. Roughly twenty-two thousand years ago tectonic movement and volcanic rock dammed this basin, and since then it has filled a hollow of some 13 square kilometres, though rarely more than about ten metres deep.
Did you know? Meadows of the green alga Chara globularis cover most of the lake floor.
07 Quilotoa
Ecuador · 32.9 km from Latacunga0.861° S 78.897° W
Image by Marisa04 from Pixabay The calm is deceptive. Quilotoa is a volcano, and the caldera is the scar of a violent eruption around 1280, about eight centuries ago, rated 6 on the volcanic explosivity index, the scale of the great historic eruptions: its pyroclastic flows and mudflows travelled far enough to reach the Pacific Ocean. After the eruption the collapsed crater slowly filled with water, producing one of the most photogenic landscapes in Ecuador.
Did you know? The lake holds about 0.35 cubic kilometres of water, and fumaroles still vent gas on its floor.
08 Kaieteur Falls
Guyana5.178° N 59.482° W
Dan Sloan · CC BY-SA 2.0 The name comes from a Patamona legend, not a surveyor's label. It tells of an elder chief named Kaie who deliberately paddled his canoe over the falls as a sacrifice, appeasing a great water spirit to save his people from a raid — the falls were named for him afterward.
Did you know? Kaieteur National Park was created in 1929 covering just 5 square miles and was later expanded to around 242 square miles.
09 Laguna Verde
Bolivia22.795° S 67.835° W
Pedro Szekely from USA · CC BY 2.0 The color itself is a chemistry-meets-weather phenomenon rather than a living one. Copper and arsenic-bearing minerals from the surrounding volcanic terrain dissolve into the shallow water, and when wind picks up across the lake's surface, it stirs suspended sediment and mineral particles into the water column, shifting the color from a calm pale turquoise to a vivid, almost frothy emerald.
Did you know? Despite the toxic water, living mats of cyanobacteria still grow here, and a salt-loving bacterium, Chromohalobacter sarecensis, was first discovered in the lake.
10 Huacachina
Peru · 4.6 km from Ica14.088° S 75.763° W
Gatol fotografia from La Paz, Bolivia · CC BY-SA 2.0 The setting changes with the light. At midday the sand is bleached and glaring; late in the afternoon the ridges turn amber and honey-coloured, every ripple picked out in shadow, and the climb to the crest above the lagoon is rewarded with a view over a sea of dunes rolling away towards the coast.
Did you know? According to one version of the legend, the mermaid of the lagoon rises at night to lure strangers and drag them to the bottom.
11 Caño Cristales
Colombia2.264° N 73.794° W
Gicaman · CC BY-SA 4.0 The colour is alive. It comes from an aquatic plant, Rhyncholacis clavigera, formerly known as Macarenia clavigera, which grows attached to the rock in fast water. Young plants are green; as they are exposed to the sun they turn yellowish and then pass through every shade of red, so a single stretch of river can show the whole sequence at once. 2 billion years old, part of a western outlier of the Guiana Shield.
Did you know? The colours do not reach the river's mouth: they fade out around La Cachivera, before Caño Cristales joins the Guayabero.
12 Lake Chungará
Chile18.242° S 69.153° W
Fabolu · CC BY-SA 3.0 The lake owes its existence to a catastrophe. Some thousands of years ago, the earlier cone of Parinacota collapsed in a gigantic landslide, and the avalanche of debris swept across the valley and blocked the course of the Lauca River. Water pooled behind the natural dam, and Chungará was born. The lake is about 8.75 kilometres long and covers some 22 square kilometres. Other volcanoes ring the basin, among them Quisiquisini and Ajoya.
Did you know? Around ten metres of sediment have settled on the lake floor since the landslide dam first held back its water.
13 Bartolomé Island
Ecuador · 35.3 km from Santa Cruz0.285° S 90.549° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Stephen Montgomery from Kallangur, Australia · CC BY-SA 2.0 The landscape looks freshly made, and in geological terms it is. Like most of the Galápagos, Bartolomé is entirely volcanic, and almost nothing grows on its slopes apart from a few hardy pioneer plants. Pinnacle Rock, the island's landmark, is the eroded remnant of a volcanic formation built of thin layers of basalt, standing alone at the water's edge.
Did you know? Silvery mats of Tiquilia, a pioneer plant adapted to dry volcanic ash, are almost the only vegetation along the slopes.
14 Gocta Cataracts
Gocta
Peru · 22.9 km from Chachapoyas6.023° S 77.887° W
Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0 The strangest part of Gocta's story is how recently the wider world learned of it. People in the surrounding villages had always known the falls, but kept away: local tradition speaks of a beautiful fair-haired mermaid living in its pool, a spirit whose long pale hair is the water itself, and of a curse on those who come too close.
Did you know? Peru's government announced plans to develop tourism around the falls just two days after the height was made public.
15 Kicker Rock (León Dormido)
Roca León Dormido
Ecuador · 16.3 km from Puerto Baquerizo Moreno0.777° S 89.519° W
Xxchangwoo0120xx · CC BY-SA 3.0 The rock is what remains of a volcanic tuff cone — a crater built not of lava but of densely compacted volcanic ash, laid down in explosive eruptions and then almost entirely worn away by the ocean. Erosion has cut the remnant in two, leaving a narrow channel of deep water between the halves. Looking up from a boat into that slot, with the walls closing overhead, is the moment that visitors remember.
Did you know? Underwater the channel between the two halves is roughly 35 metres deep at its mouth and shallows to around 12 metres further in.
16 Meeting of Waters (Manaus)
Encontro das Águas
Brazil · 11.6 km from Manaus3.137° S 59.905° W
Ana Claudia Jatahy - MTUR · CC0 The reason the line holds is physical, and it is one of the most visible lessons in hydrology anywhere. The Negro is warmer, around 28 degrees, while the Solimões runs at about 22; the Negro moves slowly, near 2 km/h, while the Solimões flows at 4 to 6 km/h; and their loads of sediment give them different densities. Warm, slow, clear water slides against cold, fast, muddy water, and the boundary survives far longer than intuition suggests.
Did you know? Its tea-like colour comes from humic acids released by plant matter that never fully decomposes in the forests it drains.
17 Cuicocha
Ecuador · 26.7 km from Ibarra0.301° N 78.363° W
Tequendamia · CC BY-SA 3.0 The crater was born in violence. Roughly 3,100 years ago a major eruption at the base of Cotacachi sent out about five cubic kilometres of pyroclastic flows, leaving the great hollow that the lake now fills. Volcanic activity continued afterwards: the two islands, Teodoro Wolf, the larger, and Yerovi, the smaller, are domes of dacitic lava that pushed up inside the crater, and the last activity is dated to around 650 CE.
Did you know? The caldera walls are so steep that little sediment settles along the shore, leaving too little ground for most water plants to take root.
18 Cachoeira da Fumaça
Brazil12.601° S 41.455° W
r m · CC BY 2.0 The top of the falls lies at about 1,280 metres above sea level. From the rim the view opens over the valley and the rock formations typical of the Chapada. Brazil's geological survey calls the falls one of the most monumental and most visited sites in the region. For a long time they were thought to be the highest waterfall in Brazil, until the Cachoeira do Araçá in the state of Amazonas, about 353 metres, became known.
Did you know? The surrounding national park covers about 152,000 hectares and contains Bahia's highest point, Pico do Barbado at 2,036 metres.
19 Gruta do Lago Azul
Monumento Natural da Gruta do Lago Azul
Brazil21.145° S 56.592° W
Luiz Felipe Sahd · CC BY-SA 3.0 That colour is the reason to come. The water is exceptionally clear, and when sunlight falls through the entrance and reaches the lake, the blue deepens to an almost electric tone. This happens most strongly between September and February, when the sun's angle sends a direct beam into the chamber in the morning. The lake's true depth has never been settled: cave divers have descended to about 96 metres without finding the bottom.
Did you know? The cave chamber measures about 143 metres in length and 80 metres in width, and its lake has been estimated at about 90 metres deep.
20 San Rafael Lagoon
Laguna San Rafael
Chile46.667° S 73.933° W
Vincent Huang · CC BY 2.0 The lagoon covers roughly 123 square kilometres and is enclosed on the south by the Isthmus of Ofqui, a narrow neck of land that separates it from the Gulf of Penas. To the north the Témpanos River, whose name means "river of icebergs", links it to the Moraleda Channel and the open sea. The glacier itself drains about 760 square kilometres of ice.
Did you know? Chile began cutting a canal across that isthmus in the 20th century to avoid the stormy open sea around the Taitao Peninsula, but the works were abandoned.
21 Moconá Waterfalls
Saltos del Moconá
Argentina27.143° S 53.887° W
Loco085 · CC BY-SA 2.5 The drops themselves are modest, generally between about 5 and 10 metres, and their appearance depends on the river: the falls only show when the Uruguay is running low, and at high water the river swallows them entirely. The name suits that habit. In Guaraní, Moconá is usually translated as "the one that swallows everything", while Yucumã is said to mean "great fall".
Did you know? In 2015 a Brazilian federal court halted licensing of the planned Panambí dam because its reservoir would have flooded part of Turvo State Park.
22 Isla Incahuasi
Bolivia20.243° S 67.625° W
Image by magdalenarundgren from Pixabay The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat on Earth, about 10,582 square kilometres in area and lying at around 3,656 metres above sea level in the Bolivian Altiplano. Its surface is so level that elevation varies by less than a metre across the whole expanse.
Did you know? Some 40,000 years ago the hill really was an island, standing in a giant prehistoric lake that later evaporated.
23 Peñol–Guatapé Reservoir
Embalse Peñol-Guatapé
Colombia6.261° N 75.190° W
Juan Gómez · CC BY 2.0 The price of the scenery was a town. The old municipality of El Peñol was demolished and its people moved to a new settlement built on higher ground, while farms around both El Peñol and Guatapé were also given up; roughly a quarter of Guatapé's territory now lies under water. From the water, the reservoir's calm hides the fact that streets and fields lie beneath it.
Did you know? The Tahamí people who once lived here revered the great rock above the reservoir and called it mojarrá, meaning stone.
24 Baía do Sancho
Brazil3.854° S 32.444° W
Andrei · CC BY 2.0 The approach is half the pleasure. From the clifftop the bay is seen whole, and the water is clear enough that shoals of fish — and the occasional shark — can be spotted from above before you reach the sand. The way down is a set of steep metal ladders fixed inside a narrow split in the rock, so that you descend through the cliff itself and step out onto the beach. The alternative is to arrive from the sea by boat.
Did you know? The Noronha skink, one of two reptiles found nowhere else on Earth, is often seen on the rocks around the beach.
25 Pailón del Diablo
Cascada el Pailón del Diablo
Ecuador · 35.6 km from Puyo1.404° S 78.297° W
Krosto · CC BY-SA 3.0 Local folklore gives the place a companion. A short way off is the San Miguel waterfall, said to stand for the archangel Michael, who keeps watch so that the devil stays trapped down in his cauldron. Between the two lies the Encañada del Duende, a small hidden lagoon of emerald water ringed by tropical plants.
Did you know? The shorter route with its viewing balconies was developed in the 1990s by Donald Wolfram, who first called the site Isla del Pailón.
26 Prata River
Rio da Prata
Brazil · 14.5 km from Jardim21.350° S 56.167° W
David Morimoto (treez44est) · CC BY-SA 2.0 The clarity comes from geology. The Prata flows through limestone country in the south-west of Mato Grosso do Sul, and the high concentration of calcium carbonate makes suspended particles settle out, leaving the water glassy. The river is a tributary of the Miranda. 7 km down the Olho d'Água to the confluence and continues another 600 metres on the main river.
Did you know? The limestone of the Serra da Bodoquena region is so pure, with little or no clay, that it dissolves without clouding the water.
27 Poço Encantado
Brazil12.945° S 41.105° W
Cesar Monteiro · CC BY-SA 4.0 The pool lies at the bottom of a limestone cave, shaped over millions of years by water seeping through the rock. It is about 60 metres deep, and its level varies by around a metre and a half through the year. Its stillness is part of its magic: there is little flow to stir the water, which is why the transparency is so complete and also why the pool is so fragile.
Did you know? Under Brazilian law the cave belongs to the federal government, yet it lies on private land, where a local guide began leading visitors down in the early 1980s.
28 Laguna 69
Peru9.010° S 77.612° W
Christian Cruzado · CC BY 2.0 The name is an accident of bureaucracy. When Huascarán National Park was created in 1975, every lake inside its boundaries had to be entered on a list, and those without a traditional Quechua name, unlike neighbours such as Palcacocha or Auquiscocha, were simply given numbers. Number 69 stuck, and the lake has become one of the best-known walking destinations in the range.
Did you know? The Cebolla Pampa campsite where the walk starts also serves as base camp for climbers heading to Nevado Pisco.
29 Petrohué Waterfalls
Saltos de Petrohué
Chile41.172° S 72.447° W
P. Hughes · CC BY 4.0 The colour is the second surprise. In normal conditions the water is clear with a green and blue cast, bright against the volcanic stone; during the thaw it can turn brown and dark. Above it all rises the cone of Osorno, 2,652 m high, so that from the viewpoints the falls, the rock that made them and the volcano that produced that rock appear in a single frame.
Did you know? From the lake to the sea at the Reloncaví Estuary, the Petrohué River runs only about 36 kilometres.
30 Humantay Lake
Laguna Humantay
Peru13.379° S 72.585° W
Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0 The lake was born from the meltwater of the Humantay glacier and its neighbours. 8 hectares, and is estimated to be up to 17 metres deep. Around it grow queñua trees, tayanca shrubs and the tough bunch grass of the high Andes. Taruca deer, white-tailed deer, Andean foxes, Andean geese and condors share the slopes with grazing alpacas, horses, cattle and sheep.
Did you know? Between May and November the lake area is cold and dry with strong sunshine; most precipitation falls from December to April.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful water wonders in South America?
- On our list, Easter Island (Chile) ranks first, followed by Laguna Colorada (Bolivia) and Iguaçu Falls (Brazil).
- Which country has the most lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches in South America?
- In our collection, the most come from Brazil (8), Chile (5) and Ecuador (5).
- What is the highest waterfall in the world?
- Angel Falls in Venezuela is the highest uninterrupted waterfall in the world, with a total height of about 979 metres. It falls from the edge of Auyán-tepui, a table mountain in Canaima National Park, and is named after the American aviator Jimmie Angel.
- Why is Caño Cristales called the river of five colors?
- Caño Cristales in Colombia gets its colors mainly from Macarenia clavigera, an aquatic plant that turns bright red when water levels and sunlight are right. Together with yellow sand, green algae, blue water and black rock, it creates the river's famous rainbow appearance.
- Why does Salar de Uyuni turn into a mirror?
- Salar de Uyuni is extremely flat, so when rain leaves a thin, still layer of water on the salt crust, the surface reflects the sky almost perfectly. It is the largest salt flat on Earth, left behind by prehistoric lakes that evaporated.
- How many lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches are on this list in South America?
- The list covers 31 lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches in 9 countries. Brazil has the most, with 8.