Top 10 national parks
Our favourite places to enjoy the great outdoors
Some of the National Parks in Canada are Unesco World Heritage sites too. See what's in your own backyard by reading our travel tip.
Alberta
Banff National Park is Canada's first national park. It spans almost 7,000 square kilometres. Towering peaks, deep valleys, glaciers, forests, meadows, rivers and hot springs, the ones discovered by three Canadian Pacific Railway construction workers in 1883.
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Ontario
Algonquin Provincial Park is Canada's oldest park, spanning about 8,000 square kilometres, between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River. Camping and canoeing in the park, rambling across the maple hills, swimming in the lakes or taking part in one of the summer programs is the stuff of happy childhood memory.
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USA - Arizona
The Grand Canyon National Park is on the see-before-you-die list. It's one of the most studied geological landscapes in the world, an enormous archeological site with artifacts that date back 12,000 years from the Paleo-Indian period. About five million visitors come from around the world each year to try to take in the canyon - 446km long, up to 30km wide, and 1.6km deep.
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Wyoming
The United States' first national park, Yellowstone National Park, stretches across three states: Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It's perhaps best known for Old Faithful, its geyser, and its vast subalpine forests. Hiking, camping, boating and fishing are just some of the activities that attract visitors during the warmer months. Spotting wild life and learning about the Native American Indian traditions of those who lived in the area are other must-do activities.
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Australia - Tasmania
Visitors can catch a ferry from Triabunna to Maria Island National Park. It's paradise for bush walkers, bird-watchers and bikers. The snorkelling and diving are fantastic, and history lovers will enjoy the convict and industrial ruins that date from the 1800s. You can even stay in the original convict penitentiary.
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New Zealand
An hour west of Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world, is Fiordland, New Zealand's largest national park. Milford Sound is the best known of all of the fiords, unspeakably dramatic, while Doubtful Sound, the deepest of the fiords, is also known as “the Sound of Silence”, unspeakably serene.
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Kenya
The Maasai Mara National Reserve, on the border with Tanzania, is one of Kenya's most popular game parks. A great number of animals are concentrated into a relatively small space. The “Big Five” all live here: lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhinoceros. If you include zebra, giraffe, cheetah and hippo, you can catch the “Big Nine”. It's best visited in the summer months between the long rains (March to May) and short rains (October to December).
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Ecuador
Galapagos National Park. Fifty-one years old, this national park is composed of several volcanic islands about 1,000km west of mainland Ecuador. It's not just a national park, it's a Unesco World Natural Heritage site, home to dozens of species that you won't find anywhere else including the amazing giant tortoise. Flightless cormorants, blue-footed boobies and marine iguanas are other inhabitants. Charles Darwin's observations here in the 1830s inspired his theory of natural selection.
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Ireland
Connemara National Park is a relatively new park, established in 1980, but the almost 3,000 hectares of mountains, bogs, heaths, grasslands and woodlands are timeless. Some of the mountains - Benbaun, Bencullagh, Benbrack and Muckanaght - are part of the Twelve Bens range.
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