The UNESCO Sites of Exceptional Natural Beauty in South America
6 places in 5 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the UNESCO sites of exceptional natural beauty in South America are Canaima National Park (Venezuela), Lençóis Maranhenses National Park (Brazil) and Iguazú National Park (Argentina). The list covers 6 UNESCO sites of exceptional natural beauty in 5 countries. Ecuador has the most, with 2. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Of UNESCO's ten criteria, criterion (vii) is the only one that rewards beauty itself, as opposed to scientific value or human history. South America has some of the oldest rock on the planet in its tepuis and some of the youngest in the Galápagos, plus the Andes, the largest rainforests and rivers carrying enough water to build waterfalls on a vast scale.
Canaima in Venezuela is the land of tepuis, flat-topped sandstone mountains with vertical walls; from the edge of Auyán-tepui falls Angel Falls, the highest uninterrupted waterfall in the world at nearly a kilometre. Lençóis Maranhenses in northern Brazil is a sea of white dunes where rainwater collects in blue and green lagoons between them for part of each year. Iguazú, on the border of Argentina and Brazil, is a horseshoe of some 275 falls, with the Devil's Throat at its heart.
The Andes appear in Huascarán National Park in Peru, which protects the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain range, with Huascarán itself and glacial lakes of milky turquoise. Out in the Pacific, the Galápagos Islands are volcanoes still being built, whose isolated animals helped shape Darwin's thinking on evolution. On Bartolomé Island a young lava landscape surrounds Pinnacle Rock, a spire of eroded tuff that has become the most recognisable view of the archipelago.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canaima National Park | National park | Venezuela | ✓ |
| 2 | Lençóis Maranhenses National Park | Dune | Brazil | ✓ |
| 3 | Iguazú National Park | National park | Argentina | ✓ |
| 4 | Huascarán National Park | National park | Peru | ✓ |
| 5 | Galápagos National Park | National park | Ecuador | ✓ |
| 6 | Bartolomé Island | Island | Ecuador | ✓ |
01 Canaima National Park
Parque Nacional Canaima
Venezuela5.319° N 61.795° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Jrafave from Pixabay From the rim of Auyán-tepui falls Angel Falls, at 979 metres the highest waterfall in the world, dropping towards the Devil's Canyon; the Kukenán falls, also among the highest, pour from another tepui. Mount Roraima, where Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana meet, is the tallest of the tepuis and the easiest to climb. On the summits, cut off from the lowlands for millions of years, grows a world of endemic plants, including carnivorous pitcher plants, sundews and bladderworts that catch insects to make up for the poor soil.
Did you know? Angel, his wife and two companions needed 11 days to climb down the tepui on foot after their plane's wheels sank into the marshy summit.
02 Lençóis Maranhenses National Park
Parque Nacional dos Lençóis Maranhenses
Brazil2.483° S 43.133° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Julius Dadalti · CC BY-SA 4.0 The genuinely strange part is what lives in those lagoons. Visitors have long asked how fish end up in pools sitting on top of pure white sand, far from any river mouth — and the answer isn't that birds carry in eggs, as the popular story goes. Some lagoons connect underground to permanent waterways, letting fish move in once the water rises. But others hold onto life through the dry months in place: the trahira, a toothy predator, burrows into damp mud and goes dormant until the rains return, while smaller species lay eggs directly in the wet sand before the pools disappear, leaving the next generation to hatch on cue.
Did you know? Dunes in the park reach about 40 metres high, and the lagoons between them can stretch up to 100 metres long and 3 metres deep.
03 Iguazú National Park
Parque Nacional Iguazú
Argentina · 34.7 km from Foz do Iguaçu25.705° S 54.248° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by AndreaRochas from Pixabay About half of the river is swallowed by the Devil's Throat, a long, narrow chasm 80 to 90 metres wide into which the water thunders from three sides, throwing up a permanent column of spray. The Argentina–Brazil border runs through it. Roughly four-fifths of the falls lie on the Argentine side, which is why the park is the place to be close to them: raised walkways run above and below the cascades, one crosses the upper river for about a kilometre to stand directly over the Devil's Throat, and boats cross to San Martín Island.
Did you know? Eleanor Roosevelt is said to have exclaimed "Poor Niagara!" on seeing Iguazú, whose tallest drops are much higher than Niagara's roughly 50 metres.
04 Huascarán National Park
Parque nacional Huascarán
Peru · 20.3 km from Huaraz9.400° S 77.400° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by vincecroos from Pixabay The range is a watershed between two oceans. Its western slopes drain to the Santa River and the Pacific; its eastern side feeds the Marañón and ultimately the Amazon. Between the valley floors at around 2,500 metres and the snow lines, the park climbs through patches of high Andean forest of Polylepis, puna grassland and alpine tundra. Its most famous plant is the Queen of the Andes, Puya raimondii, a giant bromeliad and a special object of protection; animals include the spectacled bear, the Andean condor, vicuña and the taruca deer, together with more than 120 bird species, from torrent ducks to giant hummingbirds.
Did you know? That 1970 avalanche raced about 18 km down the valley at an average speed of roughly 280 to 335 km/h.
05 Galápagos National Park
Parque nacional Galápagos
Ecuador0.333° S 90.000° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Jonathan Green · CC BY 4.0 What makes the park unlike anywhere else is the animal life and its lack of fear. Marine iguanas, the only lizards in the world that feed in the sea, pile up on the lava to warm themselves after diving; giant tortoises graze in the highlands; flightless cormorants, Galápagos penguins, blue-footed boobies and, on Española, waved albatrosses breed within a few steps of the trail. At Tortuga Bay on Santa Cruz, white-tip reef sharks cruise the shallows in groups.
Did you know? Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island tortoise, was found in 1971 and died in 2012; his preserved body is displayed in the park.
06 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. A trail of about 600 metres, much of it a wooden stairway laid over the loose cinder, climbs to the summit lookout, passing spatter cones and small craters along the way.
Did you know? Several lichen species of the genus Ramalina found on Pinnacle Rock are endemic to the Galápagos.
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 UNESCO sites of exceptional natural beauty in South America?
- On our list, Canaima National Park (Venezuela) ranks first, followed by Lençóis Maranhenses National Park (Brazil) and Iguazú National Park (Argentina).
- Which country has the most UNESCO sites of exceptional natural beauty in South America?
- In our collection, the most come from Ecuador (2), Argentina (1) and Brazil (1).
- What is a tepui?
- A tepui is a table-top mountain of very old Precambrian sandstone in the Guiana Highlands, with sheer cliffs on all sides. Their isolated summits carry plants and animals found nowhere else.
- Why are there lagoons among the dunes of Lençóis Maranhenses?
- Heavy rain in the first half of the year fills the hollows between the dunes, and an impermeable layer beneath the sand holds the water, creating lagoons that shrink again in the dry season.
- How high is Angel Falls?
- Angel Falls drops about 979 metres from Auyán-tepui, with an uninterrupted fall of around 807 metres, making it the highest waterfall in the world.
- How many UNESCO sites of exceptional natural beauty are on this list in South America?
- The list covers 6 UNESCO sites of exceptional natural beauty in 5 countries. Ecuador has the most, with 2.