Region · the Andes
The Most Beautiful Places in the Andes
14 places · every one real, mapped, and worth the trip
The Andes run about 7,000 kilometres down the western edge of South America, the longest continental mountain range on Earth, thrown up where the Nazca plate grinds beneath the South American one. That single collision produces an extraordinary range of landscapes: active volcanoes, the driest desert in the world, high salt flats, tropical cloud forest, and the largest ice fields outside the poles.
This is our editors' pick of the most beautiful places along the range, spanning Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. It isn't a strict ranking — every entry is a real, mapped place with an honest note on what makes it worth the altitude.
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Torres del Paine Patagonia's icon
Magallanes, Chilean Patagonia
Three granite towers rising over glacial lakes at the southern end of the range, ringed by one of the world's great trekking circuits.
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Aconcagua Highest in the Americas
Aconcagua Provincial Park, Mendoza Province, Argentina
The tallest peak outside Asia, a vast bulk of rock and ice in Mendoza Province reached by a non-technical but seriously demanding route.
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Mount Fitz Roy The climbers' skyline
Los Glaciares National Park, Santa Cruz, Argentina
A jagged spire above the Patagonian steppe whose weather is as famous as its silhouette, with day walks reaching a lake right beneath it.
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Perito Moreno Glacier The calving wall
Los Glaciares National Park, Santa Cruz, Argentina
A glacier front several kilometres wide that advances fast enough to shed house-sized blocks into the lake while you watch.
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Salar de Uyuni The mirror
Altiplano, southwestern Bolivia
The world's largest salt flat, high on the Bolivian altiplano, which floods into a vast reflecting sheet after rain.
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The Atacama Desert The driest place
Northern Chile
A high desert between the Andes and the coastal range so arid that some weather stations have never recorded meaningful rain.
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Colca Canyon Twice the Grand Canyon
Arequipa Region, southern Peru
One of the deepest canyons on Earth, roughly twice the depth of the Grand Canyon, with Andean condors riding the morning thermals.
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Rainbow Mountain (Vinicunca)
Cusco Region, Peruvian Andes
Banded mineral stripes across a high Peruvian ridge above 5,000 metres — spectacular, and genuinely hard on the lungs.
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Lake Titicaca The high lake
Peru–Bolivia border, Andes
The largest lake in South America, straddling the Peru–Bolivia border on the altiplano and one of the highest navigable lakes anywhere.
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Moray The agricultural laboratory
Maras district, Sacred Valley, Cusco Region, Peru
Concentric Inca terrace bowls above the Sacred Valley in which the temperature drops measurably from the top ring to the floor.
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Cotopaxi The snow cone
Cotopaxi Province, Ecuador
One of the world's most symmetrical and most active high volcanoes, its glaciated cone standing clear above the Ecuadorian páramo.
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El Tatio Geysers The high geysers
Andes near San Pedro de Atacama, Antofagasta Region, northern Chile
The world's highest major geyser field at over 4,300 metres, where dozens of vents steam hard in the freezing dawn air.
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Cocora Valley The tallest palms
Quindío, Coffee Region, Colombia
Colombia's cloud-forest valley in the Central Cordillera, studded with wax palms that grow taller than any other palm on Earth.
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Marble Caves
General Carrera Lake, Aysén, Chile
Water-polished marble chambers on a Patagonian lake, their swirled walls lit blue-green by light bouncing off the glacial water.
The Andes span from the tropics almost to Cape Horn, so there is no single season: Patagonia is at its best roughly November to March, while the Peruvian and Bolivian highlands are driest and clearest between May and September. Altitude is the common thread — several of these sit above 4,000 metres, and every guide notes how much acclimatisation the place really needs.
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