7 beautiful places to visit in South America

Last year I had the pleasure to travel through South America for 10 weeks. We visited Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile and while the travels were sometimes strenuous, the places we visited totally made up for it.

As with my other articles of this series, those places are just a little selection and cannot encompass all the beautiful areas in South America. But maybe they inspire you to consider this wonderful continent for your own travels and to head out and explore. In the different sections below I have also included some links to articles on my homepage, in case you want to learn more about the different places and how to get there.

Before I now continue to show you the seven places, which fascinated me the most, I want to thank you for the huge feedback to my last article here on Steemit. I’m kind of overwhelmed by all the feedback I got. Thank you!

1. Santuario de las Cascadas

Our first stop after a long flight to Quito, Ecuador, was the cloud forest of Mindo just a two hours bus ride from the capital. It’s a beautiful area were you can experience all kinds of nature during various hikes through the cloud forest.

The place I show you here is the Santuario de las Cascadas, which is located 6km out of town and can be reached either by bicycle or taxi. Once you arrive at the top of the canyon you have to cross it in the little Tarabita, which is an experience by itself.

On the other side of the canyon lies a trail leading to many beautiful waterfalls, embedded in the lush greenery of the cloud forest.

Here’s a little video I recorded of our visit.

2. South Plaza

After visiting Mindo we flew to the Galapagos Islands. Those Islands are a nature paradise full of unique wildlife. The animals, which fascinated me the most, were the Iguanas. Those little creatures look like miniature Godzillas. The Marine Iguanas can be found on most of the islands of the archipelago. To see land Iguanas we visited South Plaza. In the two hours on the island we had some great encounters and I could snap a few photos of the little dragons.

3. Huacachina

The next country we visited was Peru and our first stop there was the desert oasis of Huacachina. This little town lies just a few miles outside of Ica, a four hour bus ride south of Lima. It was a huge contrast to the other places we had visited. The oasis is surrounded by huge dunes and photographing those was something special for me.

We spent three days in Huacachina and each morning I climbed on top of a dune long before sunrise while the town was still asleep. The early morning hours are really the best time to enjoy the landscape. During day it’s very loud with sand buggies howling through the dunes. But at dawn all is calm.

4. Machu Picchu

I guess there’s no visit to Peru without a visit to Machu Picchu. We took the PeruRail train from Ollantaytambo and then spent one night in Aguas Calientes to be able to explore the ruins early in the morning.

Well, we were not the only people to do this. Two hours before sunrise the queue at the bus stop in Aguas Calientes already begins to build. So to be on the first bus up to the ruins you have to get up very early. Or you do the hike, which takes roughly 60 minutes. But this is not the most fun on a rainy day, and we had plenty of rain the morning of our visit.

But still, with fog rolling through the compounds, Machu Picchu looked magical.

5. Uyuni

At more than 3500 meters above sea level lies the world’s largest salt flat, the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. I felt so small standing within miles and miles of nothingness. It’s such a surreal place and was totally worth the visit.

6. Laguna Blanca

Bolivia is full of spectacular landscapes. We did a four day jeep tour, starting from Tupiza in the south. From there we first drove up to Uyuni and then through a desert like landscape down to Sur Lipez. On the way there we stopped at wonderful lagoons, steaming geysers and hot springs surrounded by steep mountains and volcanos.

A personal highlight for me was Laguna Blanca and Laguna Verde with the mighty Licancabur rising in the distance. On a windy evening I climbed the slopes of one of the surrounding mountains to have a good view of the lagoons and the Volcano. It was an exhilarating feeling experiencing the last sunset of our tour in this setting.

7. Valle de Marte

For our next stop we left the solitude we enjoyed during our tour through the Bolivian highlands behind. San Pedro de Atacama is a very busy place and it was quite a contrast to Bolivia.

But it also has a lot to offer. It’s the starting point of countless tours into different parts of the Atacama dessert. My focus during the six days we spent there was to explore both the Valle de la Luna and the Valle de Marte, the latter being one of the highlights of our journey for me.

Normally both places are very crowded. In Valle de Marte they even do sand boarding from the dunes. But if you take a bike and drive there before sunrise you can experience the magical silence of the Atacama dessert.

I hope you enjoyed my little South America selection. I know there are many more beautiful places to visit and it was certainly not my last visit.

What are some of your favorite places in South America?



!steemitworldmap -0.052892 lat -78.775264 long Mindo and 6 other beautiful places in South America D3SCR