Yacuri National Park Voyage Tips and guide

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Yacuri National Park (officially, Parque Nacional Yacuri) is a protected natural area in the Andean Highlands of Ecuador. The park is part of a larger conservation area that also includes the nearby Podocarpus National Park. The park is justly famous for its 46 sparkling highland lakes, the vestige of retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age.

The park covers an area of more than 43,000 hectares. It is the southernmost of Ecuador's national parks, lying on the border with Peru.

The park was established as part of the Ecuador national parks system in 2009.

Several archaeological ruins in the park bear witness to the area's long-term use by Indigenous cultures of South America. Sites include petroglyphs, cemeteries, and wide plazas. The youngest of the archaeological artifacts is a section of the Qhapaq Ñan, a road system built by the Inca over the centuries prior to Spanish conquest.

Rugged Andean mountain landscapes fill the park, which straddles the Continental Divide, with headwaters of rivers flowing west to the Pacific Ocean and other rivers flowing east to the Amazon basin. There are peaks that draw mountain climbers, such as Picacho, with an elevation of 1,883 meters. Near the park's 46 lakes are wetland areas with streams and mossy bogs that are often described as moors. While many of the highland lakes were formed by retreating glaciers, Laguna Negra is in the caldera of an extinct volcano.

Although much of the landscape looks inhospitable, the park is known to have more than 280 types of plants, with 32 endemic species found nowhere else. Plants include grassy paramo that supports llamas, tapirs, peccary, and a host of small mammals, including foxes and rabbits. The spectacled bear also makes its home in these mountains, as does the Andean condor, often seen soaring on thermal currents. More than 100 bird species can be seen in the park, including 4 endangered species.

Temperature ranges from 8 to 12C.

The nearest city with a commercial airport is Loja, which is served by Aeroregional and LATAM Ecuador.

From Loja, Union Cariamanga operates several daily buses to Amaluza, which is within 10 km of the park. The trip takes at least 4 hours and costs about US$5. In Amaluza you can hire a local taxi to take you the park entrance, which is about 30 km

Hike.

• Hiking
• Mountaineering

• Vilcabamba
• Podocarpus National Park