Places · Peru

Natural Wonders of Peru: The 5 Most Beautiful Places to Visit

5 places in the atlas

Peru is defined by the Andes, thrust up along the Pacific's active margin and still rising. Their heights hold astonishing variety: the mineral-painted stripes of Rainbow Mountain, laid bare at over 5,000 metres as the ice retreats, and the Colca Canyon, more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon and terraced with agriculture older than the Incas. From coastal desert through soaring peaks to Amazon rainforest, Peru packs a continent's worth of ecosystems into one country. Below are the 5 natural wonders of Peru in the atlas — the most beautiful places to build a trip around, each with what makes it remarkable, when to go, and how to reach it. Best overall time: The dry season (roughly May–October) for clear skies and safe high-altitude trails; mornings are best for condors at Colca.

Manú National Park

Madre de Dios & Cusco, southeastern Peru

One of the most biodiverse places on Earth — a park descending from Andean cloud forest to lowland Amazon, with more bird species than any other protected area in the world.

Forest Latin America

Colca Canyon

Arequipa Region, southern Peru

One of the deepest canyons on Earth — more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon — carved by the Colca River through the Peruvian Andes, and among the surest places in the world to watch giant Andean condors soar.

Canyon Latin America

Lake Titicaca

Peru–Bolivia border, Andes

The highest large navigable lake on Earth — a vast, luminous inland sea at 3,812 metres in the Andes, ringed by snow peaks and dotted with floating reed islands.

Lake Latin America

Moray

Maras district, Sacred Valley, Cusco Region, Peru

A set of vast concentric terraces sunk into the Andean plateau above the Sacred Valley — engineered bowls in which the temperature drops measurably from the top ring to the floor, giving Inca farmers a whole ladder of climates in one field.

Living terraces Latin America

Rainbow Mountain (Vinicunca)

Cusco Region, Peruvian Andes

A high Andean ridge striped in bands of red, gold, green, and turquoise — mineral-stained sediments laid bare at over 5,000 metres, one of the most colourful mountains on Earth.

Mountain Latin America