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Brasília is Brazil's federal capital and the seat of its government. Founded in 1960 on a high plateau in the Brazilian Highlands, it was built from scratch in just 41 months to move the country's center of power inland from the coast. Designed by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, it is one of the most ambitious planned cities of the twentieth century and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. The capital is the center of the Federal District, home to about 2.8 million people, and is the third-largest city in Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro is Brazil's best-known city and the capital of the state that shares its name. It lies on the Atlantic coast at the entrance to Guanabara Bay, where steep granite peaks, tropical forest, and long white beaches meet in a single city of 6.2 million people, with nearly 14 million in its metropolitan area. It was the capital of Portuguese Brazil, the Brazilian Empire, and the Republic until 1960, and it remains the country's second-largest city by population and its leading international destination.

Salvador de Bahia, officially São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos, is Bahia's capital and the cultural heart of Brazil's Northeast. Founded in 1549 on a peninsula between Todos os Santos Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, it was the capital of colonial Brazil for more than two centuries and remains one of the country's largest cities. Its predominantly Afro-Brazilian population gives it a distinctive character, while its historic colonial center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Nestled along Brazil's eastern coast, Todos os Santos Bay, also known as All Saints Bay, is a captivating natural harbor that has played a pivotal role in the region's history and development. As Brazil's largest bay, it surrounds the vibrant city of Salvador de Bahia, the capital of the state of Bahia. It serves as both a geographical landmark and a cultural icon. With deep historical roots and rich ecological diversity, this expansive bay remains a central feature of Bahia's coastal landscape.

Bolivia's Altiplano, a vast highland plateau surrounded by the towering Andes, once supported a network of important water bodies that sustained ecosystems and communities. Among these were Lake Poopó and Lake Uru Uru, two saline lakes that formed part of an interconnected hydrological system fed by the Desaguadero River. However, recent environmental changes have caused these lakes to shrink or disappear entirely, leaving a landscape marked by ecological decline.

Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park, Chile's first, is named in honor of Vicente Pérez Rosales, a revered Chilean politician and diplomat. It encompasses an expansive area within the Lakes Region of the Chilean Andes and is renowned for its breathtaking and diverse landscapes. It hosts the iconic Lake Todos Los Santos and the Petrohué Waterfalls, surrounded by Valdivian temperate rainforests, a sanctuary for numerous plant and animal species.

The Orinoco River rises in the Parima Mountains of southern Venezuela and sweeps in a great arc through Venezuela and Colombia before spreading into a vast delta on the Atlantic coast. It is the third-largest river on Earth by discharge and a homeland for peoples such as the Warao, Piaroa, Ye'kwana and Yanomami. Its basin shelters river dolphins, giant otters and the critically endangered Orinoco crocodile, and it now faces mining, mercury contamination and oil-industry pressures that put much of that richness at risk.

Lake Titicaca lies in the northern Altiplano, between Peru's Puno Region and Bolivia's La Paz Department, within the Central Andean wet puna. It covers 8,372 sq km and is the largest lake in South America by volume. It is often called the world's highest navigable lake, a title that refers to commercial vessels rather than altitude alone, and despite its elevation, it never freezes. The Andes that enclose the basin rise on both sides, and the lake itself occupies a tectonic depression.

The Central Andean wet puna is a cold, moist, high-elevation grassland that runs along the Andes from northern Peru to northern Bolivia, above the tree line at roughly 3,500 m. It forms a long, narrow, often fragmented band between the dry Sechura Desert to the west and the wet Peruvian Yungas to the east, creating abrupt transitions over short distances. To the north, it gives way to the Cordillera Central páramo, and to the south to the Central Andean puna.

The Central Andean dry puna is a cold, arid grassland and shrubland that occupies the southern part of the central Andes along the Cordillera Occidental. It lies between the tree line and the permanent snow line, mostly above about 3,000 m, and is the driest of the three puna ecoregions, receiving less than 400 mm of rain a year and having an eight-month dry season. Its landscape includes snow-capped volcanoes, high plateaus, shallow lagoons, and salt flats.