🇨🇱 Chile · Far North
Lauca National Park is one of the great jewels of the Chilean altiplano and one of the most overwhelming landscapes in the country: a high-altitude world, above 4,500 meters in its highest sectors, where the air is thin, the light is pure and the Andes unfurl snowbound volcanoes, mirror lakes, green bofedales and wildlife that looks like it came from another planet. It lies in Chile's far north, on the Bolivian border, and is a Unesco Biosphere Reserve.
Its most famous postcard is Lake Chungará, one of the highest lakes in the world, whose waters reflect the Payachatas volcanoes — the perfect cone of Parinacota and its twin, Pomerape. Around them vicuñas graze, vizcachas slip between the rocks and Andean flamingos tint the shores pink. The little village of Parinacota, with its colonial adobe church, adds the human, Aymara mark to this grand natural stage.
This guide covers the essentials of Lauca with a practical eye: how to get there from Arica, why it pays to acclimatize in Putre, what to see in the park, how to protect yourself from altitude sickness and cold, and what precautions to take in a setting as beautiful as it is extreme. A journey to the roof of Chile, where Andean nature is on full display.
The Lauca altiplano has been inhabited for millennia by Andean peoples, today represented above all by the Aymara communities, who herd llamas and alpacas, farm the ravines and keep their language, their traditions and their religion alive, a blend of Andean belief and Catholicism. Villages like Parinacota, with its colonial adobe church, bear witness to that long human presence and to the passage of Spanish evangelization through these high lands. The region lay within the sphere of the Andean cultures and the Inca empire, and during the colonial period and the early republican era it was part of Peru, passing to Chile only in the 20th century after the War of the Pacific and the treaties that followed (definitively with the Treaty of Lima in 1929). Lauca National Park was created in the 1970s to protect this unique altiplano ecosystem, its flora and its fauna — especially the vicuña, which had been under threat — and was later declared a Unesco Biosphere Reserve within the Lauca complex. Today it is managed by CONAF and forms, together with Las Vicuñas National Reserve and the Salar de Surire, a large complex of protected areas on the Arica y Parinacota altiplano. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The far north of Chile, Aymara land pressed up against Peru and Bolivia: the 'city of eternal spring', the Morro headland that decided a battle of the War of the Pacific, the altiplano of Lauca National Park beside Lake Chungará, and the Chinchorro mummies, the oldest in the world.
Read the history of Arica y Parinacota Region →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The territory of today's Lauca National Park is part of the Andean altiplano, the immensely high plateau of the central Andes shared by Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina, above 3,500 and 4,000 meters. It's a world of puna, volcanoes, bofedales and salt flats, of thin air, extreme cold and intense solar radiation, inhabited for millennia by Andean peoples able to adapt to such harsh conditions.
In this area the predominant Andean people are the Aymara, one of the oldest and most widespread cultures of the altiplano. The Aymara have traditionally lived from herding llamas and alpacas — camelids perfectly adapted to the altitude, giving them wool, meat and transport — from terraced farming in the more sheltered ravines, and from exchange between the different ecological tiers, from the coast up to the puna. They keep their language (Aymara) alive, along with their traditions, their music, their dress and a religion of their own, a blend of Andean belief (the cult of Pachamama, or mother earth, and of the sacred peaks, or mallku) and Catholicism.
Villages like Parinacota, inside the present-day park, and other hamlets on the Arica y Parinacota altiplano, are living testimony to that ancestral human presence. For the Aymara, this landscape of volcanoes and lagoons is not merely a natural setting but a territory charged with spiritual meaning, where nature is inhabited by sacred forces that must be respected.
Before the Spanish arrived, the Lauca altiplano was absorbed, like much of the Andes, into the orbit of the Inca empire (Tawantinsuyu), which connected these high lands to its vast road network and its economy of exchange between regions. The Aymara lordships of the altiplano were incorporated into the empire, keeping many of their ways of life but under administration from Cusco.
With the Spanish conquest in the 16th century came a new order and, above all, Catholic evangelization. Missionaries crossed the altiplano building churches in the Andean villages, raised with local techniques and materials — adobe walls, thatch and timber roofs — and with Indigenous labor. The result was a mestizo religious architecture, deeply original, of which the Church of Parinacota is one of the finest examples: a colonial adobe temple, white and plain on the outside, that holds within it murals and paintings combining Christian iconography with Andean sensibility and motifs.
Out of that fusion came the popular religiosity of the altiplano still lived today: patron-saint festivals, dances, offerings and a Catholicism interwoven with the cult of Pachamama and of the peaks. Local legends — such as the famous story of Parinacota's 'walking table', a table that the tale says moved on its own — reflect that imagination in which the Christian sacred and the Andean sacred blend.
Through the colonial period and the early years of republican life, the Arica y Parinacota altiplano — including the area of today's Lauca National Park — was not part of Chile but of Peru. It was an Andean border region with an Aymara population, tied economically and culturally to southern Peru and the Bolivian altiplano, with which it shares villages, language and traditions.
Everything changed with the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), the great conflict that pitted Chile against Peru and Bolivia for control of the Atacama desert's resources (above all saltpetre). The Chilean victory completely redrew the map of the far north: under the Treaty of Ancón (1883), Tacna and Arica passed under Chilean administration pending a plebiscite that was never held. The status of these territories remained in dispute for decades.
The definitive settlement came with the Treaty of Lima in 1929, brokered by the United States: Tacna returned to Peru, while Arica and its altiplano — and therefore the area of the future Lauca National Park — remained permanently under Chilean sovereignty. So this Andean corner, home to Aymara communities closely tied to their counterparts in Peru and Bolivia, became part of Chilean territory while keeping its strong cross-border Andean identity.
In the 20th century the Chilean state recognized the exceptional value of the Lauca altiplano ecosystem and moved to protect it. Lauca National Park was created in the 1970s with the aim of conserving this fragile and singular high-altitude environment: its volcanoes, lagoons, bofedales and, above all, its wildlife. One of the central motives was protecting the vicuña, the wild camelid of the altiplano, which had been hunted intensively for its exceptionally fine wool and was seriously threatened.
The park's creation allowed vicuña populations to recover and other emblematic species to be conserved, among them Andean flamingos, vizcachas and various birds of the high-altitude wetlands. Lake Chungará, the Payachatas volcanoes and the bofedales thus came under protection, managed by the Corporación Nacional Forestal (CONAF), the body responsible for Chile's protected wild areas.
International recognition arrived when Unesco added the area to its world network of Biosphere Reserves (the Lauca Biosphere Reserve), a designation that underlines both the ecosystem's natural value and the importance of reconciling conservation with the lives of the human communities who live there. The park also became part of a large complex of protected altiplano areas, alongside Las Vicuñas National Reserve and the Salar de Surire Natural Monument.
Today Lauca National Park is one of the great natural destinations of northern Chile and one of the country's most treasured protected areas. Every year it receives travelers from all over the world who climb up from Arica to marvel at Lake Chungará, the Payachatas volcanoes, the bofedales full of vicuñas and flamingos and the village of Parinacota with its colonial church. It's also part of the growing astrotourism and nature-tourism offering of the far north, within the Arica y Parinacota region.
The park's great challenge is balancing three things: conserving a fragile high-altitude ecosystem, developing tourism, and upholding the rights and wellbeing of the Aymara communities who live on this land. Those communities maintain their traditional way of life — herding, farming, festivals — and take an increasing part in the management and the benefits of tourism, selling craftwork, offering services and asserting their role as the ancestral inhabitants of these lands.
For the traveler, visiting Lauca with respect means caring for the natural world (staying on the trails, not disturbing the wildlife, leaving no rubbish), respecting the communities and their sacred places, and taking altitude precautions seriously. Doing so lets you enjoy one of the most impressive landscapes in South America and helps ensure that this 'roof of Chile' — with its vicuñas, its flamingos, its volcanoes and its people — remains a sanctuary for the generations to come.