One country, every climate.
Geyser fields at 4,300 metres, cellar doors an hour from the capital, granite towers at the end of the road. What each tour is actually like, what it costs, and where to book it.
Seven that carry a Chile trip.
The reservoir day up the Cajón del Maipo, the port-city hills, a cellar in the Maipo Valley, the towers at the bottom of the map. These are the bookings people build the rest of the itinerary around.
Cajon del Maipo/Embalse del Yeso Tour with Picnic
Van trip from Santiago into Cajón del Maipo and Embalse del Yeso, with mountain towns and a wine-and-cheese picnic snack.
From $37 per person
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★ 4.2Book ahead in summerVina Del Mar, Valparaiso, Casablanca & Reñaca TourFrom $392,838 reviews
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★ 5.0Long day, big countryFarellones Park TourFrom $54848 reviews
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The desert only performs at dawn.
Pickup at four in the morning for El Tatio, where the geysers only perform before the sun warms the basin. Back for lunch, out again at five for the Valle de la Luna sunset. Between the two sit the salt flats, the flamingo lagoons and the red stones at Piedras Rojas. Nothing here is a short walk from anything else, which is why the day tours exist.
Chile is 4,300 km long. Which end?
Almost nobody does the whole country in one trip, and the ones who try spend it in airports. Pick the stretch that sounds like your holiday: desert dawn, wine valley, or the far south. Every option behind each one is priced and reviewed.
The dry north
Desert and altitude
7 hours · from $70 · 943 reviews
San Pedro sits at 2,400 metres and everything worth seeing is higher. Geysers at four in the morning, salt lagoons you can float in, red rock at sunset, and skies so dry the observatories moved here. Two nights is the minimum, three is the honest answer. Nobody comes back saying the desert was the boring part.
See the Atacama days →
The middle third
Wine valley and port city
from $39 · 2,838 reviews
The easiest stretch to travel and the one most trips underrate. Santiago in the morning, Valparaíso’s funiculars and painted hills by lunch, a Casablanca or Maipo cellar on the way back. All of it fits in day trips from one hotel, which is why the central bookings outnumber everything else on this site.
See the central Chile days →
Bottom of the map
Patagonia proper
15 hours · from $90 · 727 reviews
A four-hour flight from Santiago, then a bus to Puerto Natales. The Base of the Towers hike is eight hours up and back, the full-day circuit shows you the Cuernos, the guanacos and Grey Glacier without the climb. Wind is a given. Book the weather-flexible option if you have only one day.
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Chile’s best landscape is overhead.
Three hundred cloudless nights a year and air with almost no water in it: the reason half the world’s big telescopes ended up in this desert. The tours run small, hand you a blanket and a mate, and split between the physics version and the Licanantay one, where the constellations are dark shapes between the stars rather than the stars themselves.
The valleys start an hour from the capital.
Maipo for the old cabernet houses, Concha y Toro and Santa Rita and Cousiño Macul with their gravel drives and cellar tunnels. Casablanca for the cool white wines, on the road you were taking to the coast anyway. Most of these run with lunch and a driver, so nobody has to abstain.
Penguins, whales and a lot of wind.
Magdalena Island holds roughly 120,000 Magellanic penguins and lets you walk a roped path straight through them. Across on Tierra del Fuego there is a king penguin colony, the only one outside the sub-Antarctic islands. Humpbacks feed in the Francisco Coloane park from December.
Valparaíso is built on forty-two hills.
A working port with a UNESCO old town stacked above it, reached by century-old ascensores that still cost a few hundred pesos. Murals on every retaining wall, Neruda’s house at the top of Cerro Florida, seafood at the Mercado Cardonal. Most tours pair the hills with Viña del Mar’s beaches and a Casablanca vineyard on the drive back.
Pick your stretch of the map.
Valparaíso for the funiculars and the murals. San Pedro for the geysers and the salt flats. Puerto Natales for the towers. Santiago for the markets and the Andes on the skyline. Punta Arenas for the penguins. Pucón when you want a volcano you can actually climb.
Pick the day, not the place.
Twelve shapes a day in Chile can take, from a 4 a.m. geyser run to an afternoon in a Maipo cellar. Pick the shape and the options behind it are priced, rated and ready to book.
The mountains are ninety minutes away.
The capital sits in a bowl with the Andes on one side and the Pacific on the other, and both are a morning’s drive. Snow in July, a turquoise reservoir at 2,500 metres, a port city, and four wine valleys, all with the return seat included.
Ten days, north to south.
You do not drive Chile end to end in a fortnight, you fly it, and the internal hops are short. This is the sequence that gets the desert, the capital and Patagonia into one trip without a wasted day.
Leg 1
Start in the desert
Fly to Calama, three nights in San Pedro. Give the first day to the altitude and the Valle de la Luna, then take El Tatio and the altiplanic lagoons on separate mornings. One night goes to the stars.
Book the desert leg →
Leg 2
Down to the capital
Three nights in Santiago covers more than it sounds: the Mercado Central and Cerro San Cristóbal on foot, Valparaíso and Viña for a day, a Maipo or Casablanca cellar for another, the Cajón del Maipo for the third.
Book the central leg →
Leg 3
Fly south for the towers
Punta Arenas, then the road to Puerto Natales. Keep three days for Torres del Paine so one can be given back to the weather, and add the Magdalena Island penguins if the season is right.
Book the Patagonia leg →
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