Qualla: Santa Teresa National Park

Santa Teresa National Park: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two million trees stand here, and almost none of them grew by accident. When the historian Horacio Arredondo set out in the 1920s to rescue the crumbling colonial fortress on this coast, he realized the stone alone could not survive: the live dunes were creeping inland, threatening to swallow the very monument he wanted to save. So he planted a forest to hold the sand back. A century later, that deliberate woodland covers 1,400 of the park's 3,000 hectares, a green sea of more than two million trees standing guard over a fort, a coastline, and one of Uruguay's most surprising landscapes. Santa Teresa is a park that was, quite literally, willed into being.

Santa Teresa National Park: The Army's Forest

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Santa Teresa breaks the usual rules. Unlike Uruguay's other national parks, it is not run by the country's protected-areas service but by the Park Service of the Army of Uruguay, a legacy of the colonial fortress at its heart. The military stewardship gives the place a distinctiv...

Santa Teresa National Park: Twelve Kilometers of Atlantic

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The coast is the other half of the park's character. Beaches run for more than 12 kilometers, sweeping from Punta del Diablo in the south to Cerro Verde in the north, wide bands of sand broken here and there by rocky stretches. Each beach has its own personality: Playa Grande, Pl...

Santa Teresa National Park: Gardens, Koi, and a Bird-Safe Aviary

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For a park born of military reforestation, Santa Teresa has a playful streak. The Invernaculo is a botanical garden and greenhouse holding more than 300 plant species, including some found nowhere else in Uruguay and many imported from tropical forests on other continents. El Cho...

Santa Teresa National Park: Room for Ten Thousand

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Few parks anywhere are built to host crowds on this scale. The campground holds 1,600 sites and can accommodate up to 10,000 overnight guests, from rustic tent pitches under towering shade trees to improved sites with electricity and water, plus cabins, some perched near the beac...