The 34 Best Adventures in South America

The Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat, covering 10,582 square kilometres of the Bolivian altiplano at 3,656 metres above sea level.

When covered by a thin layer of water after the rainy season, it becomes a perfect mirror reflection of the sky and one of the most surreal landscapes on earth.

The Brazilian side of Iguaçu Falls trades Argentina's up-close catwalks for one long panoramic circuit, sweeping across nearly the entire 2.

7km curtain of over 250 individual falls at once.

A short walkway leads out to a platform inside the spray of the Devil's Throat, with boat trips for those who want to get soaked.

It's compact enough to see in half a day, unlike the sprawling park across the border.

Three granite towers punch straight up out of Chilean Patagonia, reflected in turquoise glacial lakes that change colour with the light.

The full W trek links the towers with glaciers, wind-battered forests and the vivid blue of the Grey Glacier over several days.

Even a single day at the base-of-the-towers viewpoint delivers one of South America's most dramatic landscapes.

Mount Fitz Roy is a serrated granite peak on the border of Argentina and Chile in Patagonia, rising 3,405 metres above the Patagonian steppe.

Its distinctive jagged silhouette, often wreathed in cloud, inspired the Patagonia clothing brand logo and is considered one of the most technically challenging climbs in the world.

Six hundred miles off the Ecuadorian coast, the Galápagos archipelago is a living laboratory of evolution where wildlife shows no fear of humans.

Charles Darwin's observations here inspired his theory of natural selection, and today visitors can snorkel with sea lions and walk alongside giant tortoises.

A four-day trek along Inca-built stone steps, climbing over the 4,215m Dead Woman's Pass and threading cloud forest to reach ruins at Sayacmarca and Winay Wayna.

The final pre-dawn push through the Sun Gate delivers the classic first view of Machu Picchu below.

Campsites sit on terraced mountainsides ringed by snow-streaked Andean peaks.

Permits are capped at 500 a day, and a guide is mandatory.

Water drops 979 metres off a sheer tabletop mountain in the middle of remote Venezuelan jungle, making this the tallest waterfall on Earth by a wide margin.

The fall is so tall that much of the water disperses into mist before ever reaching the pool below.

Reaching it means days of river travel by dugout canoe through Canaima National Park, so the sheer remoteness is part of what keeps the view unspoiled.

Roughly 900 moai, the monumental stone figures carved by the Rapa Nui between the 13th and 16th centuries, are scattered across this small volcanic island 3,700km from mainland Chile.

The best-known cluster, fifteen restored moai at Ahu Tongariki, catches the sunrise directly behind it.

Elsewhere, the Rano Raraku quarry has dozens of unfinished statues still half-buried in the hillside where their carvers left them.

A massive tidewater glacier advancing into Lago Argentino, calving house-sized chunks of ice with a thunderous crack several times a day.

One of the few glaciers on Earth still growing, its brilliant blue ice face and extensive boardwalk system make it Patagonia's signature sight.

A volcanic archipelago 350km off Brazil's coast, this is regularly ranked among the world's best beaches, with clear water that reveals reef sharks and sea turtles from the shoreline.

A strict daily visitor cap and environmental tax keep the beaches close to empty even in high season.

Morro Dois Irmaos, twin volcanic peaks rising from the sea, anchor the view from almost every beach.

A small-ship cruise through the Galapagos archipelago, landing daily by dinghy on islands where sea lions, marine iguanas, and blue-footed boobies show no fear of visitors.

Charles Darwin's living laboratory looks much as it did when he arrived, thanks to strict limits on visitor numbers and permitted routes.

Snorkeling brings penguins and hammerhead sharks within arm's reach.

Each island differs sharply from the last in wildlife and landscape.

The steep peak rising behind Machu Picchu is a climbable mountain in its own right, with narrow Inca-built stone steps switchbacking up its face.

From the summit the entire citadel unfolds below, terraces and all, with the Urubamba river winding through the valley beyond.

Only 200 permits are issued per morning slot, which keeps the trail genuinely uncrowded but means booking months ahead.

A 4-5 day traverse of Torres del Paine's signature sights: the granite Torres themselves, the sheer Cuernos horns, French Valley's hanging glaciers, and Grey Glacier's blue ice.

Refugios and campsites break the route into manageable days, though Patagonian wind can turn brutal without warning.

The reward is one of the most consistently spectacular multi-day trails in South America, from lenga forest to turquoise glacial lakes.

Peninsula Valdes juts into the South Atlantic off Argentine Patagonia and holds one of the continent's great wildlife spectacles: southern right whales calving close to shore, orcas that beach themselves hunting sea lion pups, and colonies of elephant seals and penguins.

A UNESCO site reached from Puerto Madryn, it's linked by unpaved roads between viewing points.

Sightings are seasonal, so timing matters.

Aconcagua rises 6,961 metres in Mendoza Province, the highest peak in both the Western and Southern Hemispheres and one of the Seven Summits.

Serious climbers spend two to three weeks on the standard Normal Route to the summit, but the mountain rewards a much shorter visit too: a half-day trek from the Horcones trailhead reaches Laguna de los Horcones, a glacial lake with a full view of the south face and glacier.

Aconcagua Provincial Park protects the surrounding high-altitude terrain.

One of the world's deepest canyons slices through the Peruvian Andes, its terraced walls farmed by local communities for centuries before the Incas ever arrived.

Andean condors ride the morning thermals at Cruz del Condor, often gliding within metres of the viewpoint's edge.

Traditional villages along the canyon rim still weave and dress in pre-Columbian styles rarely seen elsewhere in Peru.

One of the world's highest active volcanoes, a near-symmetrical glacier-capped cone rising over 5,800 metres above the Andean paramo grasslands south of Quito.

Most visitors don't summit - that requires technical mountaineering and acclimatisation - but a hike or horseback ride to the refuge at around 4,800 metres gets close enough to stand at the glacier's edge, with wild llamas often grazing the surrounding slopes.

Its perfect-cone silhouette is one of the most recognisable mountain shapes in South America.

Mineral bands of red, gold, turquoise and lavender stripe this Andean ridge, exposed by erosion after centuries of livestock trampling stripped the surface soil.

Sitting above 5,000 metres, the colours are more vivid in person than in most photos, especially just after rain.

Its rapid rise from local secret to must-see spot in under a decade has brought heavy foot traffic to a genuinely fragile landscape.

Despite the name, this isn't a desert: seasonal rains fill the valleys between hundreds of square kilometres of white dunes with clear turquoise lagoons, usually June to September.

Outside that window, the dunes stretch out bone-dry and empty.

Reaching the interior means a 4x4 or a walk across shifting sand from the gateway town of Barreirinhas, but the landscape has no real equivalent on the Brazilian coast.

Marketed as the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia sits on the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego, snow-capped peaks rising directly behind its harbour.

It is the main departure point for Antarctica cruises, and shorter boat trips from the same harbour pass the red-and-white Les Eclaireurs lighthouse and islands crowded with sea lions, cormorants and penguins.

Tierra del Fuego National Park lies a short drive west for subantarctic forest and coastal trails.

One of South America's most active volcanoes, a near-perfect snow-capped cone above the lakeside town of Pucon, with a permanently active lava lake sometimes visible glowing from the crater rim on clear nights.

A full-day guided climb in crampons reaches the summit for a look directly into the smoking crater, while at night the volcano's silhouette glowing faintly red is visible from town.

Ski slopes cover its lower flanks in winter, an unusual pairing of active volcanism and alpine sport.

Tambopata protects lowland Amazon rainforest in southeastern Peru, reached by boat from Puerto Maldonado.

Jungle lodges put visitors within reach of oxbow lakes, giant otters, and one of the Amazon's largest macaw clay licks, where hundreds of parrots gather at dawn.

Guided walks and night boat rides turn up a density of wildlife hard to match elsewhere in Peru, though it costs real time and money to reach.

Deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Yasuní is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, home to more tree species in a single hectare than in all of North America, alongside jaguars, giant otters, harpy eagles and several uncontacted indigenous groups.

Jungle lodges reached by dugout canoe offer guided hikes, canopy towers and night paddles where caiman eyes reflect torchlight across blackwater lagoons.

San Carlos de Bariloche sits on the shore of Nahuel Huapi Lake in Argentine Patagonia, a Swiss-styled town backed by the Andes and a gateway to a national park of forested peaks and turquoise lakes.

Chocolate shops line the Centro Cívico, while the Circuito Chico drive and the Cerro Campanario cable car reach panoramic viewpoints over the lake district.

It doubles as a ski base in winter and a hiking and mountain-biking hub in summer.

Wind and ancient salt deposits have carved this stretch of the Atacama Desert into ridges, dunes and a natural amphitheatre that genuinely resembles a lunar landscape, 13km from San Pedro de Atacama inside the Los Flamencos National Reserve.

At sunset the salt-crusted rock turns deep red and violet, drawing every tour van in town to the same handful of viewpoints.

By day it's simply one of the driest, starkest places on Earth.

A collapsed volcanic caldera holds this startlingly turquoise-green crater lake, its color shifting with the light and mineral content of the water below.

A rim trail circles the crater edge with views down to the lake and out across the Andean highlands, while a steep path descends to the shoreline for those who want to kayak or simply stand at the water's edge.

High on the Bolivian Altiplano near the Chilean border, this shallow lake turns a vivid blood-red from algae and mineral sediment, its shores dotted with borax islands and thousands of James's flamingos feeding in the mineral-rich water.

At over 4,200 meters altitude, the surrounding landscape is a stark, otherworldly desert of volcanoes, geysers and rock formations typically visited as part of a multi-day Uyuni salt-flat circuit.

The world's highest administrative capital spills down a canyon at over 3,600 meters, with the wealthier neighborhoods lower in the bowl and poorer areas climbing toward the thin air of the rim — a layout the city's cable-car network, the world's largest urban Teleférico system, makes spectacularly visible from above.

The Witches' Market sells traditional Andean remedies alongside colonial-era churches and a lively street-food scene.

Wedged in a valley at the foot of the active Tungurahua volcano, Baños has built a reputation as Ecuador's adventure-sports hub, with canyoning, white-water rafting, mountain biking and Andes-edge zip-lining all based out of town.

The 'Route of the Waterfalls' cycling or driving route strings together a dozen cascades, including Pailón del Diablo's thundering drop into a narrow gorge.

A slow river cruise from Iquitos into the Peruvian Amazon, where guided skiff excursions reveal pink river dolphins, caimans, and a canopy full of macaws.

Days follow the rainforest's rhythm: dawn birdwatching, midday heat, and night walks for nocturnal wildlife.

Small riverboats reach tributaries larger vessels can't, guided by locals from villages along the route.

It's a wildlife trip first, with river sunsets as a scenic bonus.

Officially named the Yungas Road, this narrow gravel track earned its nickname from decades as one of the world's most dangerous roads, with sheer cliff drops of up to 600 meters and no guardrails along much of its length.

Since a paved highway took over most through-traffic, the original road has become a popular mountain-biking route, descending some 3,500 meters from frigid Andean altitude into humid Yungas jungle over 64 kilometers.

Huacachina is a small palm-ringed lagoon swallowed by towering sand dunes on the edge of the Peruvian desert, a short detour off the Pan-American Highway.

The village is just a few streets and a handful of hostels around the lagoon; dune buggies and sandboarding on the surrounding dunes are the real draw.

It's a loud, high-energy stop rather than a place with much depth.

An hour's drive from Quito, Mindo drops into misty cloud forest thick with orchids, hummingbirds and over 500 recorded bird species, making it one of Ecuador's top birdwatching destinations without the remoteness of the Amazon.

Canopy zip-lines, tubing down the Mindo River and butterfly farms round out a more moderate adventure-tourism scene, geared as much toward wildlife-watching as adrenaline.

Nicknamed for the near-vertical rock face it descends, this short but dramatic railway uses a series of switchbacks to drop the train down a mountainside once considered one of the most difficult stretches of track ever built.

Built in the early 1900s to link the Andean highlands to the coast, it's now run as a heritage tourist ride between Alausí and Sibambe, with views down the gorge that made the engineering feat necessary.