The 27 Best Adventures in North America

Established in 1885, Banff is Canada's oldest national park and one of the world's most spectacular.

Turquoise lakes, ancient glaciers, hot springs, abundant wildlife, and the postcard town of Banff itself make this an unmissable destination in the Canadian Rockies.

Yellowstone is the world's first national park and still its strangest, sitting atop a supervolcano that surfaces as thousands of geysers, hot springs, and mudpots.

Old Faithful erupts on a near-hourly schedule, while the Grand Prismatic Spring's rainbow colours come from heat-loving bacteria.

Beyond the geothermal basins, the park holds free-roaming bison, elk, wolves, and grizzly bears across nearly 9,000 square kilometres of forest and canyon.

The Maroon Bells are two peaks — Maroon Peak and North Maroon Peak — in the Elk Mountains of Colorado, rising to 4,317 and 4,273 metres respectively.

The reflection of the burgundy-coloured peaks in the still waters of Maroon Lake, particularly in autumn when the surrounding aspen trees turn gold, is one of the classic sights of the American Rockies.

Yosemite Valley is a granite gorge cut by glaciers, with El Capitan and Half Dome rising thousands of feet above the valley floor and waterfalls dropping straight off the rim.

Beyond the valley, the park holds giant sequoia groves, alpine meadows, and high-country lakes reached by the seasonal Tioga Road.

It's one of the birthplaces of American rock climbing, and climbers on El Capitan's face are visible from the valley floor with binoculars.

The Grand Canyon is one of the world's great natural wonders — 446 kilometres long, up to 29 kilometres wide, and over 1,800 metres deep, carved over millions of years by the Colorado River.

The layered bands of red rock reveal two billion years of geological history and glow with extraordinary colour at sunrise and sunset.

The Wave is a sandstone rock formation in the Coyote Buttes area of the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness in Arizona, famous for its colourful, undulating forms created by 190-million-year-old Jurassic sand dunes.

The swirling bands of red, orange, and pink sandstone make it one of the world's most extraordinary geological formations.

The Teton Range rises abruptly and without foothills from the flat valley floor of Jackson Hole, creating one of the most dramatic mountain frontages in the Americas.

Below it, the Snake River, a chain of glacial lakes and open sagebrush flats hold moose, elk, bison and both black and grizzly bears.

Trails range from flat lakeshore loops to serious alpine climbs within the same few miles of road.

North America's tallest waterfall drops in three tiers down a granite cliff face in Yosemite Valley, at its thunderous peak each spring when snowmelt sends it roaring.

By late summer it can slow to a trickle or vanish entirely, so timing genuinely changes what you see.

The valley floor meadow below offers an open, unobstructed view, with El Capitan and Half Dome in sight at the same time.

Zion's main canyon is a half-mile-deep slot of red and cream sandstone carved by the Virgin River, with the Narrows letting visitors wade upriver between walls that close in overhead.

The valley floor is reached only by a free shuttle in peak season, keeping the canyon quieter than the crowded parking lots suggest.

Angels Landing's chained final pitch is the park's signature scramble, but most of the canyon is accessible on flat paved trails.

A sub-Arctic town on the Hudson Bay coast known as the polar bear capital of the world, where bears gather each autumn waiting for the sea ice to freeze.

Specially built tundra vehicles bring visitors safely within metres of wild bears, and the same stretch of coast offers beluga whale watching in summer and reliable northern lights viewing in winter.

No road connects Churchill to the rest of Manitoba.

Haleakala's summit on Maui sits at 3,055 metres above sea level, placing it above the clouds for one of the world's most famous sunrise experiences.

The volcanic crater contains a moonlike landscape of cinder cones and lava flows extending 11 kilometres across and 800 metres deep.

Teotihuacan was one of the largest cities in the ancient world, and its two great pyramids — the Sun and the Moon — still dominate the Mexican plateau just outside the capital.

The Avenue of the Dead runs more than two kilometres between them, past palace complexes decorated with faded murals.

Both main pyramids can be climbed, and the view from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun takes in the whole site and the mountains beyond.

Mount Rainier is an active stratovolcano rising 4,392 metres above the Puget Sound lowlands of Washington State, making it the most topographically prominent peak in the contiguous United States.

In summer, its slopes are carpeted with wildflower meadows and it is reflected in the lakes of Paradise and Reflection Lakes.

A steep 2.

5-mile round trip up Zion Canyon's sandstone spine, finishing on a knife-edge ridge with chain handholds and 1,200-foot drops on both sides.

The switchbacking approach up Walter's Wiggles gives way to an exposed scramble that rewards climbers with a sweeping view down Zion Canyon.

A permit lottery now limits how many hikers tackle the chains at once, since it's not for anyone uneasy with heights.

VIA Rail's transcontinental flagship crosses Canada in four days aboard 1950s stainless-steel dome cars, from Toronto through the Canadian Shield and prairies into the Rockies at Vancouver.

Glass-domed Park cars let passengers watch scenery from above the roofline, and Prestige cabins include their own bathroom and picture windows.

The appeal is less one view than the sheer, unhurried scale of the country passing by.

Lake Tahoe straddles the border between California and Nevada in the Sierra Nevada mountains, its remarkable clarity allowing visibility to a depth of over 20 metres.

Surrounded by ski resorts, pine forests, and granite peaks, it offers spectacular hiking and water sports in summer and world-class skiing in winter.

Mexico's Copper Canyon is actually a network of canyons in the Sierra Madre Occidental, several deeper than the Grand Canyon, cut by rivers through pine forest and red rock.

The main way to see it is the Chepe train, which crosses 37 bridges and passes through 86 tunnels on its way between the desert lowlands and the pine-covered rim.

Small Rarámuri (Tarahumara) communities still live within the canyon system.

A textbook-perfect conical volcano rising above the rainforest near La Fortuna, dormant since 2010 but still ringed by the geothermal hot springs its decades of activity created.

Hiking trails through the surrounding national park pass old lava fields from the 1968 eruption, while dozens of resorts built around natural hot spring rivers make soaking with a volcano view the region's signature activity.

It's become one of Costa Rica's most popular honeymoon and romantic-getaway destinations for exactly that reason.

A limestone sinkhole near Tulum with startlingly clear freshwater, shallow turquoise pools giving way to dramatic cave passages hung with stalactites.

Turtles and small fish glide beneath snorkelers in water so clear it barely seems real, especially deeper into the cavern sections.

A series of turquoise limestone pools cascades down a natural stone bridge above the rushing Cahabón River, which vanishes underground beneath the pools before reemerging downstream.

Swimming from one pool to the next, framed by dense jungle on all sides, feels remote in a way that matches the effort of reaching it — the last stretch of road is famously rough.

A steep viewpoint hike above gives the classic aerial view of the stacked terraces.

An 11-mile coastal trail along Kauai's Na Pali Coast, climbing in and out of fluted, jungle-green valleys with the Pacific breaking against sea cliffs far below.

The route crosses Hanakapiai Stream, skirts the exposed Crawler's Ledge, and ends at the remote Kalalau Valley and beach.

Permits are required past the two-mile mark and are famously hard to secure, often selling out within seconds of release.

One of Central America's most accessible active volcanoes, a manageable half-day hike from Antigua across hardened black lava fields that are still warm underfoot in places.

Depending on current activity, guides lead visitors close enough to roast marshmallows over volcanic heat vents, with views back over Antigua's valley and, on clear days, neighbouring Volcan de Fuego's periodic ash plumes.

It's a genuinely approachable volcano experience that doesn't require technical climbing gear.

A steep overnight trek up this dormant volcano rewards climbers with a front-row camp beside its base, facing directly at neighboring Fuego, one of Central America's most active volcanoes, erupting with visible lava and ash several times an hour after dark.

The climb is genuinely strenuous, gaining nearly 1,500 meters over loose scree, but reaching the summit at dawn for views over a sea of clouds is one of Guatemala's most rewarding treks.

A cinder cone volcano that famously erupted from a level cornfield in 1943, growing to over 400 metres within a decade and burying two villages under lava - one of the few volcanoes in the world whose entire life cycle has been documented from birth.

The half-buried bell tower of San Juan Parangaricutiro's church still protrudes from the hardened lava field, an eerie, singular sight.

Horseback rides across the black lava field to the church ruins, followed by a hike up the cinder cone itself, make for a genuinely unusual full day out.

The paved Vine Trail runs 12.

5 miles between downtown Napa and Yountville, weaving past manicured vineyard rows, stone wineries and oak-dotted hills.

Quieter backroads through Carneros add rolling, sheep-grazed vistas that turn yellow with wild mustard flowers each spring.

The route is flat enough for casual riders, with tasting rooms, bakeries and picnic stops built into most itineraries.

A mountain nature reserve in the Escambray range above Trinidad, Topes de Collantes offers a cooler, greener contrast to Cuba's coastal scenery, with hiking trails leading to waterfalls, natural swimming pools and coffee plantations tucked into the hills.

Caburní Falls is the reserve's best-known hike, a steep trail down to a swimmable waterfall pool, while the area's coffee-growing history adds a working-landscape element beyond pure scenery.

Boats gliding along this river between Lake Izabal and the Caribbean pass through a dramatic limestone gorge draped in jungle, hot sulfur springs bubbling right at the waterline, and Castillo de San Felipe, a Spanish colonial fort built to guard against pirates raiding the river route inland.

The mix of jungle scenery, warm-water swimming and colonial history along one boat journey gives it a quieter character than Guatemala's more famous ruins.