🇧🇷 Brazil · South
Cambará do Sul is a highland town in the Campos de Cima da Serra, in northeastern Rio Grande do Sul, and the main gateway to the two most spectacular canyons in southern Brazil: Itaimbezinho and Fortaleza. Ringed by high grasslands, araucaria pines, cold air and a landscape of gaucho pampa on top of the range, it is a destination for nature, trekking and views that stop you short.
Its great draw is the canyons of the Aparados da Serra (home to Itaimbezinho) and Serra Geral (home to Fortaleza) national parks, enormous gorges carved into the basalt plateau, with walls hundreds of meters high, waterfalls that drop into the void and lookouts over vertiginous drops. Add to that waterfalls such as the Cascata dos Venâncios, the gaucho culture of the high grasslands, the araucarias and a clear sky made for stargazing.
This guide covers the essentials of Cambará do Sul with a practical eye and real prices: how to get there and get around, how to visit the Itaimbezinho and Fortaleza canyons, what other natural attractions there are, where to sleep and eat in this cold, gaucho corner of the range, and how to combine it with neighboring Praia Grande (SC) and the Serra Gaúcha. Cambará do Sul is canyons, high grasslands, araucarias and clean air: the great nature experience of southern Brazil.
Cambará do Sul sits in the Campos de Cima da Serra, a region of cold highlands in the northeast of Rio Grande do Sul that was historically the land of the tropeiros and of highland cattle ranching, with a strong gaucho culture tied to the land, the herds and the araucarias. The name 'cambará' refers to a tree of the region. The area was settled by families who raised cattle and logged araucaria timber. With the creation of the Aparados da Serra (1959) and Serra Geral (1992) national parks —which protect the great canyons— Cambará do Sul became the base for nature tourism in the region. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Brazil's southernmost state: a disputed frontier of the Pampa and of the Guaraní Jesuit missions, cradle of the gaúcho of mate and churrasco. Land of the Farroupilha Revolution and of Garibaldi, of the German and Italian immigration of the Serra Gaúcha, of wine and of the spectacular canyons of Cambará do Sul.
Read the history of Rio Grande do Sul →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
There is one picture that sums up Cambará do Sul better than any brochure: an open field, white with frost at dawn, a lone araucaria silhouetted against the sky, and a few meters away, with no warning at all, the ground simply vanishes into a seven-hundred-meter drop. It is the only place in Brazil cold enough to freeze the grass and where, minutes later, you can lean out over a canyon that has nothing to envy the world's great canyons. That contrast —highland gaucho pampa and vertiginous basalt gorge— is the key to why this little town of a few thousand people became one of the most sought-after nature destinations in southern Brazil.
Cambará do Sul sits in the Campos de Cima da Serra, a region of cold highlands in northeastern Rio Grande do Sul, more than 1,000 meters above sea level, marked by open grasslands, araucaria forests (the pinheirais) and a harsh climate, with very cold winters, frequent frosts and even the occasional snowfall. It is a landscape of high pampa, very different from the tropical Brazil imagined by anyone who only knows the country's beaches.
The settlement history of this region is tied to the tropeiros and to highland ranching. The old drovers' roads crossed these fields, moving livestock —above all mules and cattle— between the south of the country and the fairs of the interior, especially the great Sorocaba fair. The high grasslands, good for raising cattle, drew ranchers and smallholders who settled in the area.
Local culture was forged around the land: cattle raising, chimarrão, churrasco, gaucho traditions and the use of the araucaria (whose seed, the pinhão, is a typical food in autumn and winter). The name 'Cambará' comes from a tree of the region. That is how a highland, gaucho, country community was born, shaped by the cold and the altitude.
The great turn in the history of Cambará do Sul came with the protection of the canyons around the municipality. The Parque Nacional de Aparados da Serra, which protects the celebrated Itaimbezinho canyon, was created in the middle of the 20th century (in 1959), making it one of the oldest national parks in Brazil. Its aim was to preserve the spectacular set of canyons carved into the basalt plateau, where the Serra Geral drops abruptly toward the coastal plain, along with its Mata Atlântica, its araucarias and its wildlife.
Later, in the closing decades of the 20th century, the Parque Nacional da Serra Geral was created, protecting other canyons in the region, among them the imposing Fortaleza. Together, the two parks form one of the most impressive canyon systems in South America, with walls hundreds of meters high, waterfalls that drop into the void and dizzying lookouts.
Protecting these parks changed the calling of Cambará do Sul: from a cattle and timber town to the base for nature tourism. Araucaria logging, once important, gradually gave way to conservation, and the canyons became the region's main resource.
The canyons that made Cambará do Sul famous are the result of a geological story hundreds of millions of years long. The plateau the region sits on is made of thick layers of basalt, a volcanic rock produced by enormous lava flows in the Cretaceous, some 130 million years ago, when the supercontinent Gondwana was starting to break up and South America was pulling away from Africa. Those successive flows stacked up layers of rock hundreds of meters thick, which today make up the Serra Geral.
Over time, the uplift of the land and, above all, river erosion carved deep gorges into that basalt plateau. Water, helped by the rock's natural fractures and by the harsh highland climate, undercut the edge of the range where it drops sharply toward the coastal plain, creating the spectacular canyons of Itaimbezinho, Fortaleza and others. The near-vertical walls, several hundred meters high, show the different lava flows stacked one on another.
That origin explains the drama of the landscape: a plateau of high grasslands that ends all at once in an abyss, with waterfalls plunging into the void down basalt walls. It is geological heritage of international value, and understanding how it formed helps you appreciate, from the lookouts, the scale of the deep time that sculpted these giants of stone.
Once the national parks were consolidated, Cambará do Sul established itself as the main gateway to the great canyons of southern Brazil and as one of the most highly regarded ecotourism and adventure destinations in the region. Its closeness to Itaimbezinho and Fortaleza, plus the landscape of high grasslands, araucarias and waterfalls, draws visitors who love trekking, photography and nature.
The town built up an infrastructure of rural pousadas, campeira-cooking restaurants and travel agencies that organize trips to the canyons and other attractions. The region also became known for its clear skies, ideal for stargazing, and for the experience of highland cold, a rarity in Brazil.
Today Cambará do Sul combines its gaucho, country heritage with its role as canyon capital. The way the parks are run, with booking systems and quotas, aims to reconcile growing tourism with the conservation of a unique natural heritage. Together with neighboring Urubici and the Serra Gaúcha, it is part of the great nature route of southern Brazil.
The other silent lead in the story of Cambará do Sul is the araucaria (Araucaria angustifolia), the Brazilian pine that a century ago covered much of the Campos de Cima da Serra and today survives above all within the boundaries of the national parks. For much of the 20th century, the Mata de Araucárias was flattened by the timber industry: araucaria wood, soft and easy to work, fed sawmills across the region and was exported on a large scale, to the point that the species ended up classified as critically endangered. What visitors photograph today as the typical landscape —those flat-crowned pines, like parasols, cut out against the sky over the grasslands— is in fact what remains of a forest that came close to disappearing.
From that same araucaria comes the pinhão, the edible seed that drops from the cones between April and July and that underpins a seasonal cuisine deeply rooted in the highlands: pinhão roasted over coals, boiled with salt, in soups, in risottos and even in desserts. The 'festas do pinhão' held in several municipalities in the region (including neighboring São Francisco de Paula) revolve around this seed, which for generations was a subsistence food for the rural communities of the high grasslands, including the Kaingang Indigenous communities who originally lived on these lands before the settlers arrived.
As for wildlife, the canyons and grasslands of Cambará do Sul are the territory of species that became symbols of local conservation: the gato-do-mato, the veado-campeiro (pampas deer), and above all birds such as the papagaio-de-peito-roxo (vinaceous-breasted parrot), an endemic, threatened species that depends directly on the araucaria for food and for nesting. The fate of that bird —whose population collapsed along with the araucaria forest— is a reminder of why protecting these parks, far from being a bureaucratic whim, proved decisive in saving an entire ecosystem.
The growth of tourism brought management problems of its own. For years, access to the parks was relatively open, with tickets bought at the gate and no clear cap on visitors per day. That began to change when demand —driven by social media, where photos of Itaimbezinho and Fortaleza went viral— overwhelmed the capacity of the trails and lookouts, causing queues, pressure on the infrastructure and concern among ICMBio technicians (the federal body that runs Brazil's national parks) about the environmental impact.
The answer was to concession the management of 'visitação' (the public-use area, not conservation itself) to a private company, Urbia, which since 2021 has handled ticket sales, staggered entry times and the online quota system for Aparados da Serra and Serra Geral. The model sparked debate —some question the privatization of tourism management in protected areas— but it also made it possible to order the flow of visitors, fund improvements to trails and lookouts, and keep tighter control over how many people enter a fragile ecosystem each day.
For today's visitor, this translates into a very practical detail: it is no longer enough to travel to Cambará do Sul and show up at the park gate. You have to book your entry in advance through the official platform, choose a time slot and stick to it. That is a minor nuisance next to what is at stake: the balance between showing the world one of the most impressive landscapes in South America and keeping that very success from eroding what makes it unique.