← Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
The Greatest National Parks in the Southern Hemisphere
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The world has many amazing places, but not all of them 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, that being said, some national parks stand out above all the 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 sponsored by Mint Mobile. It's been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I'd like to update this and suggest that Insanity is paying too much for something when you can get something equally as good for less. With Mint Mobile you can stop the insanity and get high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network starting at only 15 bucks a month. 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The number of amazing national parks around the world is far too many to cover in a single episode, so I'm going to try to limit the number of parks I cover and so I'll only be covering parks that I've personally been to in this episode. I'm also only going to cover parks that are in the Southern Hemisphere. I've gone out of my way to try to visit all of the national parks in the United States and Canada, so I'm going to cover those in a future episode. And while I've been to a lot of places, I haven't been everywhere, so there are a lot of great parks that will be left off this list. That being said, I can assure you that all the places I will be covering are great. So with that, let's start down under with my favorite park in Australia and I think the best one in the country, Kakadu National Park. Kakadu is located in Australia's Northern Territory and is about 150 miles, or 240 kilometers east of the city of Darwin. It covers nearly 20,000 square kilometers, or 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's home to an incredible array of wildlife, including saltwater crocodiles, wallabies, and more than 280 bird species, making it one of the premier bird watching 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, among some of 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 very accessible and the park can reasonably be explored in about two days. The next park is in nearby New Zealand. Fiordland National Park. Fiordland is one of the most remote and dramatic areas of New Zealand, is 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's also the centerpiece of the Te Waheepanamu UNESCO World Heritage Site. 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, Fiordaland 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 birds. 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's in one of New Zealand's more remote areas, but it's well worth the trip. Most visitors actually base themselves in Te Anau, a small town right on the park's edge. Te Anau is in 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, and the most well known has to be Galapagos Island national park in Ecuador. I've been to the Galapagos Islands twice and each visit was amazing and totally different. I've previously done an entire episode on the Galapagos and another episode on Darwin's theory of coral atoll formation. Galapagos national park encompasses most of the Galapagos Islands, a remote volcanic archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles or 1,000 kilometers off the coast of Ecuador. It was established in 1959 by the nation of Ecuador and it protects an ecosystem that has become one of the world's most important natural laboratories. The islands are famous 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 has 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 then sail from island to island. However, you can also explore it by land, which would be a little bit cheaper. Puerto Aora is the largest town in the Galapagos 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 to the southeast, the next park lies on the border of Brazil and Argentina. Iguazu national park, or technically, parks, plural, because there's a park on each side of the border. Iguazu is best known for containing one of the largest and most spectacular waterfall systems on Earth. The park protects a section of the Parana rainforest and the immense Iguazu Falls, a chain of roughly 275 individual waterfalls that stretches nearly 3 kilometers. The most dramatic feature of the park is the Devil's Throat, a massive U shaped chasm where enormous volumes of water plunge with tremendous force, creating clouds of mist that are 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're much less likely to see most of the wildlife as the park is set up for the waterfalls. Porto Igazu, 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 and especially if you want access to the extensive trail system and viewpoints on the Argentinian side. On the Brazilian side, the gateway city is Fazdu Iguazu, 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 does require crossing the border, which might require a visa. The next national park takes us to the south of Argentina, Los Glacieres National Park. There's a good chance you haven't heard of this park, but it's well worth visiting. Los Glaciares is a vast wilderness in southern Patagonia, renowned for its glaciers, mountain peaks and pristine lakes. Covering over 7,000 square kilometers along the Andes. The park protects a large portion of the southern Patagonia ice field, one of the largest ice masses outside of Antarctica or Greenland. The park's most famous feature is the Parito Moreno Glacier, a massive advancing glacier that comes down from the Andes Mountains. And 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 into 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. And as the water rises, the pressure on one side of the glacier starts to increase. 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. Then, at some 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, the water levels equalize and the glacier resumes advancing, restarting the cycle. When the glacier is about to collapse, television stations from across Argentina come to the park to capture the event. Our final parks will be in Africa and Africa has a lot of amazing national parks, but there were two that really stood out to me. The first is Kruger national park in South Africa. If you want to see the typical animals that you expect to see on an African 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 area also extends 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 all of Africa. When I was there, our guide was most impressed by a bird that we saw, which he said he almost never sees, not the big game animals, which was something 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 road network, 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 five to seven 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 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 protective 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 Saussasvle, some of the highest in the world, rising over 300 meters, or almost 900ft. Nearby, Deadvalley is equally iconic. If you've 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 the cold waters from Antarctica that are flowing along the coast. You can't really go into the park by yourself. There aren't really any roads or facilities that were made because it's sand dunes. There are guided tours that will take you into the desert, which are worth doing, and there are also flyovers of the park that are stunning later in the day. I've experienced the park in both of these ways, and both of them are worthwhile. The jumping off point to enter the park is in Swakimund or Walvis Bay, the only communities anywhere near the park. As I said at the beginning of the episode, I've limited the parks that I've covered in this episode to those that I visited. So Virunga National Park, Ngoro, n' Goro Crater, Serengeti National Park, Torres del Paine and many others aren't on the list just because I haven't gotten there yet and this episode only covered the great parks in the Southern Hemisphere. There are, of course, other great parks north of the equator as well, and I'll be covering those in future episodes. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin 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 Siegel was the basis for the character Mo Berg in the Godfather, and that, of course, should have been Mo Green, not Moe Berg. Moe Berg was an American baseball catcher in the 1920s and 30s who became an American spy during World War II. And 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 Greene. I can only be thankful that I hadn't been listening to the song Five Guys Named Mo beforehand.