The Greatest National Parks in the Southern Hemisphere

Podcast Transcript

The world has many amazing places, but not all are equal. Some are better than others.

Countries around the world have set aside some of their most special regions as national parks. Almost every country has set aside some of its most prized land for preservation and enjoyment by everyone.

However, some national parks stand out above all others.

Learn more about some of the world’s greatest national parks south of the equator on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

This episode is going to be a bit different.

When I do public events and get questions for my monthly Q&A episodes, the most common ones are about my travels.

One of the things I often end up talking about are the national parks I’ve visited around the world.

The number of amazing national parks around the world is too many to cover in a single episode. So, to try to limit the number of parks I cover, I’ll only cover parks I’ve personally been to.

I’m also only going to cover parks that are in the Southern Hemisphere. I’ve gone out of my way to visit all of the parks in the US and Canada, so I’m going to cover those in a future episode.

While I’ve been to a lot of places, I haven’t been everywhere, so there is a lot of great parks that will be left off the list. That being said, I can assure you that all the places I’ll be covering are pretty great.

With that, let’s start down under with my favorite national park in Australia, and I think the best one, Kakadu National Park.

Kakadu is located in Australia’s Northern Territory and is about 150 miles or 240 kilometers east of Darwin.

It covers nearly 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles) and features wetlands, rivers, sandstone escarpments, and monsoon forests.

What makes Kakadu especially significant is the combination of natural and cultural heritage. It is home to an incredible array of wildlife, including saltwater crocodiles, wallabies, and more than 280 bird species, making it one of the premier birdwatching destinations in the world.

The park’s seasonal wetlands transform dramatically between the dry season, from about May to October, and the wet season, from November to April, creating constantly changing ecosystems.

Equally important is Kakadu’s deep Indigenous history. Aboriginal people have lived in the region for over 60,000 years, and the park contains thousands of rock art sites, some among the oldest in the world.

Many people don’t visit Kakadu because it’s so far from Australia’s main population centers, but it is well worth the trip. The rock art, crocodiles, and termite mounds are all accessible, and the park can be reasonably explored in about 2 days.

The next park is nearby in New Zealand: Fiordland National Park.

Fiordland is one of the most remote and dramatic areas of New Zealand. It’s located in the southwest corner of the South Island. Covering more than 12,000 square kilometers or 4,600 square miles, it is the country’s largest national park. It is also the centerpiece of the Te Wa-hi-pou-na-mu UNESCO World Heritage area.

The park is best known for its fjords, which were carved by glaciers during the last ice age. The most famous of these is Milford Sound, which features sheer granite cliffs that rise almost vertically from the water, often streaked with waterfalls fed by frequent rainfall. Nearby Doubtful Sound offers a more isolated and tranquil experience, accessible only by boat or guided tour.

Fiordland is one of the wettest places on Earth, supporting dense temperate rainforests filled with mosses, ferns, and ancient trees. The region is also home to unique wildlife, including the takahe and the kiwi.

When I visited Milford Sound, I got lucky as it had just rained for an entire day before I arrived, and the waterfalls on the side of the fjord were going full blast. Again, it is in one of New Zealand’s more remote areas, but it is well worth the trip.

Most visitors actually base themselves in Te Anau, a small town right on the park’s edge. Te Anau isn’t a city, but it’s the main gateway to Fiordland and the closest sizable settlement with accommodations, tours, and services.

Next, I want to move over to South America, where you can find a host of amazing parks.

The most well-known has to be Galapagos Islands National Park in Ecuador.

I’ve been to the Galapagos Islands twice, and each visit was an amazing experience. I’ve previously done an entire episode on the Galapagos and another episode on Darwin’s theory of coral atoll formation.

Galápagos National Park encompasses most of the Galápagos Islands, a remote volcanic archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles (1,000 km) off the coast of Ecuador. Established in 1959 by Ecuador, it protects an ecosystem that has become one of the world’s most important natural laboratories.

The islands are famed for their extraordinary wildlife, much of which is found nowhere else on Earth. Species such as giant tortoises, marine iguanas, and blue-footed boobies evolved in isolation, showing little fear of humans. It also had the world’s northernmost penguin, the Galapagos Penguin.

Most people visit the Galapagos by boat. There are several companies that provide live-aboard ships where you sleep and eat on the ship and sail from island to island.

However, you can also explore it by land, which can be cheaper. Puerto Ayora is the largest town in the Galápagos and the primary base for visitors. It has the most hotels, restaurants, tour operators, and transportation connections. From here, you can book day trips to nearby islands, snorkeling excursions, diving tours, and multi-day cruises.

If we go southeast, the next part lies on the border of Brazil and Argentina, Iguazu National Park, or technically parks, because there is a park on each side of the border.

Iguazú is best known for containing one of the largest and most spectacular waterfall systems on Earth. The parks protect a section of the Paraná rainforest and the immense Iguazú Falls, a chain of roughly 275 individual waterfalls stretching nearly 3 kilometers.

The most dramatic feature is the “Devil’s Throat,” a massive U-shaped chasm where enormous volumes of water plunge with tremendous force, creating clouds of mist visible from miles away. Walkways and viewing platforms allow visitors to experience the falls from multiple angles, often bringing them close enough to feel the spray.

Beyond the waterfalls, the park is rich in biodiversity. Dense jungle supports jaguars, tapirs, howler monkeys, and hundreds of bird species, including toucans and parrots. To be fair, you are much less likely to see most wildlife as the park is set up for the waterfalls.

Puerto Iguazú, just a few miles from the park entrance on the Argentine side, is where most visitors stay. It has the largest selection of hotels, restaurants, and tour services, and it’s the primary base for exploring the falls, especially if you want access to the extensive trail system and viewpoints within the Argentine park.

On the Brazilian side, the gateway city is Foz do Iguaçu, which also has an airport and good infrastructure. Many travelers visit both sides of the falls, crossing the border between Argentina and Brazil to get different perspectives.

Visiting both sides is ideal, but it requires crossing the border, which may require a visa.

The next national park takes us to the south of Argentina, Los Glaciares National Park.

There is a good chance you haven’t heard of this park, but it is well worth a visit.

Los Glaciares is a vast wilderness in southern Patagonia, renowned for its dramatic glaciers, jagged mountain peaks, and pristine lakes. Covering over 7,000 square kilometers along the Andes, the park protects a large portion of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, one of the largest ice masses outside Antarctica and Greenland.

The park’s most famous feature is the Perito Moreno Glacier, a massive, advancing glacier that comes down from the Andes. It does something that captures the attention of Argentina every few years.

The glacier flows into Lake Argentino, where it will flow across the lake to the opposite shore. When it does that, it creates an ice dam, splitting the lake in two, leaving a body of water on each side of the glacier.

On one side, the water continues to flow into the lake, causing it to rise. As the water rises, the pressure on one side increases.

Eventually, this pressure begins to exploit the glacier’s weaknesses. Small cracks form and expand, and a tunnel starts to melt through the ice. As water rushes through, it enlarges the opening into a dramatic ice arch.

At a critical point, the arch can no longer support its own weight. The ice dam collapses suddenly and violently, sending massive blocks of ice crashing into the lake. After the collapse, water levels equalize, and the glacier resumes advancing, restarting the cycle.

When the glacier is about to collapse, television stations in Argentina come to the park to capture the event.

Our final parks are in Africa. Africa has many amazing parks, but two really stand out in my mind.

The first is Kruger National Park in South Africa.

If you want to see the typical animals that you expect to see on a safari, including the big five of lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and African buffalo, in addition to the classics like giraffes and zebras, Kruger is one of the best places to go.

Kruger is one of Africa’s largest and most famous wildlife reserves, located in northeastern South Africa along the borders of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Spanning nearly 20,000 square kilometers, it encompasses a wide range of ecosystems, including savannas, woodlands, rivers, and grasslands.

The protected areas also extend into Mozambique, making the park’s effective size, at least for the animals, even larger.

In addition to the iconic animals, the park is home to hundreds of other species, including cheetahs, hippos, crocodiles, and over 500 bird species, making it one of the most biologically diverse reserves in Africa.

When I was there, our guide was most impressed by a bird we saw, which he said he almost never sees, not the big game animals that he saw every day.

What sets Kruger apart is its accessibility and infrastructure. Visitors can explore the park by self-drive safari on an extensive network of roads or by joining guided tours led by experienced rangers. Numerous rest camps and lodges within the park provide accommodations ranging from basic campsites to luxury facilities.

Kruger is about a 5 to 7-hour drive from Johannesburg, depending on which gate you enter the park from.

The final park I’m going to mention is one that probably isn’t something that most people would consider, yet I really found it to be one of the most amazing places in all of Africa: Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia.

Namib-Naukluft is one of Africa’s largest protected areas, stretching across a vast portion of Namibia’s southwestern desert. It encompasses part of the ancient Namib Desert, considered one of the oldest deserts on Earth, with landscapes shaped over tens of millions of years.

This is a very different experience from all the other parks I’ve mentioned. The park is mostly massive sand dunes in the deep desert. I spent five days camping in the Namib, and it was an incredible experience.

The park is most famous for the towering red sand dunes of Sossusvlei, some of the highest in the world, rising over 300 meters. Nearby Deadvlei is equally iconic. If you have ever seen a photo of dead trees in a desert, it was probably taken there.

The park also abuts the Atlantic Ocean, and along the coast, you can see seal colonies and flocks of flamingos, as well as the occasional shipwreck in the sand.

Despite technically being in the tropics, temperatures can get quite cold at night because of cold waters from Antarctica that flow along the coast.

You can’t really go into the park by yourself. There aren’t really any roads or any facilities. There are guided tours that take you into the desert, which are worth doing, and there are also flyovers of the park that are stunning later in the day.

The jumping-off point is in Swakopmund or Walvis Bay, the only communities near the park.

As I said at the beginning of the episode, I’ve limited the list to parks I’ve visited. So, Virunga National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, Serengeti National Park, Torres del Paine, and others aren’t on my list just because I haven’t gotten there yet.

This episode covered only the great parks in the southern hemisphere. There are, of course, other great parks north of the equator as well that I’ll be covering in future episodes.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

I have a correction to make that several of you pointed out.

In the episode on Las Vegas, I said that Bugsy Segal was the basis for the character Moe Burg. That, of course, should have been Moe Green, not Moe Berg.

Moe Berg was a major league baseball catcher in the 1920s and 30s who became an American spy during WWII. I’ve been thinking of doing an episode on him, as he has a fascinating story, which is probably why I said Moe Berg instead of Moe Green.

I can only be thankful that I hadn’t been listening to the song Five Guys Named Moe beforehand.

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