Atacama, Patagonia, Easter Island and the Uyuni salt flats

Santiago and Central Valley

You are met on arrival at Santiago and transferred to your hotel where you stay for two nights.

A morning tour with a local guide to introduce you to Santiago and its main sights. In the early afternoon you head into the Central Valley to one of Chile’s notable wineries. You visit its vineyards and cellars, view the vinification process, and conclude with an elegant tasting session. You return to your Santiago hotel.

The Far South and Torres del Paine

To the airport for your flight to Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan in the far south. You are met and driven to Puerto Natales, your base for the next 3 nights. On your 3 hour journey across the steppe keep an eye open for ñandu (greater rhea), caracara, guanacos, foxes and armadillos. Arriving by the shore of Last Hope Sound the rest of your day is free to explore.

A local guide meets you at your hotel and brings you to the pier in nearby Puerto Bories for a cruise through Last Hope Sound to glaciers that descend from the Southern Ice Field to feed its northern extreme. This is a very scenic journey through Patagonian landscapes, which, if the Patagonian weather is being kind, gives long views of mountain sierras, waterfalls, and forests that give way to sheep farming estancias. Along the shore you should see black-necked swans and colonies of cormorants. You reach a point below Balmaceda Glacier, which descends from the Southern Ice Field and calves small icebergs in startling blues into the Sound. At little Puerto Toro you disembark for a walk of about an hour through native coigue woods to reach a stunning viewpoint near the snout of Serrano Glacier, creaking and cracking in the remote silence. Your boat continues to a small estancia where you stop for a traditional asado al palo, or ‘lamb on the cross’ roasted by an open fire, with an opportunity to experience life on a sheep farm, walk out amongst nature in spectacular scenery, or ride horses onto the lakeside steppe. You sail back to Puerto Natales and are transferred back to your hotel by the late afternoon.

Leaving Puerto Natales early, you travel by road into the spectacular Torres del Paine NP, undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and impressive reserves in the world with its distinctive granite peaks, lakes and glaciers. During the day you tour the main sites of the park, from the Cerro Castillo entry to the exit near the Milodon Cave, including many of the iconic views of the Paine massif, such as Lago Sarmiento and the Amarga Lagoon where on a sunny day the granite towers are mirrored in the clear water. You visit the Salto Grande waterfall, you stop at Lago Nordenskjöld for views over the lake of the Cuernos del Paine, the dramatic ‘Horns of Paine’ peaks, and at Lago Grey where you cross a hanging bridge over the Rio Pingo and walk along the lake’s shingle shore to an island forest of lenga trees with distant views of the floating Grey Glacier. Leaving the park you stop to walk inside the Milodón Cave beside a replica of the mylodon, a giant sloth from the Pleistocene era whose remains were found here. You should reach your hotel in the early evening after a very full day.

Return to Punta Arenas to catch your flight back to Santiago, where you are met and taken to an airport hotel ready for your early flight to Easter Island next morning.

Easter Island

Flying out into the Pacific, you touch down at the speck of land that is Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. You are met, escorted to your hotel in or near Hanga Roa with the rest of the day free to explore. You might visit the museum and the moai statues nearby.

You are collected from your hotel for a tour of some of the island’s most emblematic sites. See p26 for their details. You visit Ana Kai Tangata cave with drawings of stylised birds related to the Birdman contest, and Vinapu with stonework that matches Incan walls in Peru, with a view of Rano Kau volcano. Reaching the crater rim, with views across its lagoons and out to the ocean, you visit the ceremonial site of Orongo, also related to the Birdman contest. In the afternoon you continue to Ahu Akivi, with 7 stone moais facing the sea, which may represent the 7 explorers sent by King Hotu Matu’a before he arrived to colonise the island. At the Puna Pau quarry you see where the statues’ red pukao hats were made, then arrive at Ahu Huri a Urenga, whose single moai stands alone to mark the winter solstice.

Your second day of touring the island’s key sites. You visit the platforms and fallen moai at Ahu Vaihu and Ahu Akahanga on the south coast then the quarry at Rano Raraku volcano where most moai were sculpted. You reach Ahu Tongariki, a ceremonial platform with 15 moai, and Te Pito Kura which has the largest statue erected on an ahu platform, the Moai Paro: 10 metres high and weighing 85 tonnes. Nearby you find the stone sphere that represents the navel of the world. End the day at Anakena beach whose beautiful setting is made unique by the row of moai, backs turned to the sea, at Ahu Nau Nau. Return to your hotel.

A free day on Rapa Nui. We can arrange an extra walking tour or boat trip if you wish.

Fly back to Santiago for one night.

Atacama

Early morning flight to the Atacama Desert, landing at Calama where you are met and driven to your lodge in San Pedro de Atacama for 2 nights. In the mid/late afternoon you are taken to visit the Moon Valley, an intricate lunar landscape of rocky outcrops, ridges and screes, fragmented with clefts and canyons. You continue to Death Valley with its impressive salt formations, then to Kari viewpoint, one of the highest points of the Salt Mountain Range, in time to watch the sunset. Return to your lodge.

This morning you travel into the Cordillera Domeyko, the western range of the Andes above the Atacama Desert, for breathtaking views of volcanoes, mountains, desert and salt flats. You pause to see the ‘Yerbas Buenas’ rock carvings and paintings made by the ancient Atacameño people, pass the shepherd village of Matancilla, and reach the Rainbow Valley with hillsides in bands of reds, greens, blues, and purples. You visit the little settlement of Rio Grande with its adobe houses before returning to San Pedro. Leaving your lodge in the mid-afternoon you visit the village of Toconao, with a craft market and little plaza in front of the Church of San Lucas, which has a separate bell tower, built in 1750 of cactus wood and adobe. You continue down to the Atacama Salt Flat, one of the world’s largest, where you should see flocks of flamingos at the Chaxa Lagoon. There is time for you to enjoy the sunset while their friends elegantly flap by before you return to your lodge.

Bolivian deserts and Uyuni salt flats

This morning you are picked up from your hotel in San Pedro de Atacama and driven to the Bolivian border at Hito Cajón far below the towering Volcano Licancabur (5916m). After border formalities you enter the other-worldliness of the Bolivian deserts: dramatically changing landscapes of puna desert, wind-eroded rock formations, salt lakes, coloured lagoons and hot springs. You journey to the Green Lagoon, the ‘Dali’ desert, the Sol de Mañana geysers, and the eye-popping Laguna Colorada lake where Andean, Chilean, and the much rarer James flamingo are seen. There is a classic photo stop at the Arbol de Piedra or ‘tree of rock’. You overnight at a hotel on the edge of the Siloli Desert.

Today you tour across the Siloli Desert, beside more dramatic highland lagoons and close to Ollague Volcano, stopping for views and curiosities. Along the way you pass by tiny hamlets where the locals keep flocks of llamas and alpacas. You should see foxes, viscachas and vicuñas too. Arriving close to Uyuni you visit the train graveyard–witnesses to Bolivia’s mining heyday. 100 years later you can walk beside and, with care, even board historic engines and carriages preserved in the dry desert air. You stay one night, either in the town of Uyuni or upgrade to a ‘salt hotel’ built with blocks of salt on the edge of the salt flats.

The Uyuni Salt Flat is the largest on the planet, a wide world of glittering white out to the horizon. With driver and guide you stop briefly at the little settlement of Colchani where locals offer salt bagged for the table or carved into blocks for building. Then you drive off onto the salt flats themselves. For most of the year you can drive across them to small islands where you scramble among giant cacti for amazing views. A picnic lunch is usually served in the middle of the salt flats. When the salt flats are flooded (which can happen in January and February and a few weeks either side), you stay to the edge but with potentially even better views with the sky mirrored in the glistening surface, then visit the train graveyard on this day instead. Coming off the salar you continue via San Cristobal with the oldest church of the Bolivian highlands, the Katar lagoon and the ‘city of rocks’ to your hotel at Villa Mar.

Today you complete a circle of the Bolivian deserts, through the Quetena bofedales wetlands and high altitude lagoons, across the salt plains of Chalviri, back to the Green Lagoon and the border into Chile. Stay tonight in San Pedro de Atacama.

Valparaiso

Fly from Calama to Santiago where you are met and driven to Valparaíso on the Pacific coast for 2 nights.

A local guide comes to your hotel to take you on a morning’s tour to introduce you to Valparaíso. Your afternoon is free for you to relax or explore the city yourself. A taxi to Pablo Neruda’s ‘La Sebastiana’ would be one possible choice.

At leisure in Valparaíso until you are collected for your flight onwards or back to the UK from Santiago airport on the road into the capital.