🇨🇱 South America
A long, narrow country that somehow fits in everything: the driest desert on Earth in the Atacama, the vineyards of the Central Valley, the glaciers and granite towers of Patagonia, and the mysteries of the end of the world on Easter Island. Welcome to Chile.
Chile is the longest, narrowest country on the continent: more than 4,000 km from the Atacama, the driest desert on the planet, to the glaciers of Patagonia and the end of the world, and barely 180 km wide on average. Before anything else, get the calendar straight, because it runs backwards from what a northern-hemisphere traveller is used to: Chile is deep in the southern hemisphere, so the seasons are inverted. December to March is high summer, and it is the window for Patagonia and Torres del Paine. July is midwinter, which is exactly why the Andes above Santiago are a working ski destination while North America and Europe are at the beach. Plan around that inversion first and everything else falls into place.
The country is usually split into four blocks. The desert north holds San Pedro de Atacama, Iquique, La Serena and the Elqui Valley, with skies so clear that this is one of the best places on Earth for stargazing — several of the big professional observatories run public visits. Central Chile has Santiago, the port city of Valparaíso and the wine valleys of Casablanca and Colchagua. The south is lakes and volcanoes: Pucón, Puerto Varas, Chiloé and Valdivia. Far-southern Patagonia has Torres del Paine, Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas. And out in the middle of the Pacific, a five-hour flight from Santiago and still Chile, is Rapa Nui — Easter Island — with its moai. The distances are the real constraint: almost nobody does all of Chile in one trip.
What Chile does better than almost anywhere is combine world-class landscape with the easy logistics of a developed country — good roads, reliable buses, frequent domestic flights, cards accepted everywhere. What catches visitors out is the price. Chile is among the most expensive countries in South America, and if you are arriving overland from Peru or Bolivia, where a hostel bed and a set lunch cost a fraction of this, the jump is abrupt, especially in Patagonia and the Atacama. The other surprise is how completely the climate changes between the two ends of the country: the clothes you pack for the Atacama are the wrong clothes for Torres del Paine.
Traveler's tip: the Chilean peso deals in big numbers, so a coffee or a set lunch can cost several thousand pesos without being expensive — a bill of $25,000 is a normal dinner, not a splurge. Cards are very widely accepted in the cities and are the easiest way to pay; carry some cash for markets, local transport and rural areas. Avoid changing money at the airport, where the rate is usually poor: the exchange houses in central Santiago give noticeably better value.
Full converter for CLP →The main gateway is Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCL) in Santiago, the country's biggest hub and one of the best connected in South America. There are direct long-haul flights from Miami, New York, Dallas, Toronto, Madrid and London, plus services across the region and on to Oceania. The main airlines operating in the country are LATAM, JetSmart and Sky Airline. Given how enormously long Chile is, domestic flights are the practical way to cover big distances: for example to reach Calama (for the Atacama) in the north or Punta Arenas (for Patagonia) in the far south. Booking ahead gets you good fares. The long-distance bus network is excellent and heavily used: comfortable services with fully reclining sleeper seats connect virtually every city at affordable prices. Within the cities, Santiago's metro is fast and efficient. For short hops there are taxis and ride-hailing apps (Uber, Cabify and DiDi operate in the main cities), a comfortable and transparent way to get around.
The single most important thing to understand about timing a trip to Chile is that the seasons are inverted relative to the northern hemisphere. Chilean summer runs from December to March and Chilean winter from June to September, so the months you would normally think of as travel season are the wrong ones for the south of the country. Southern summer is the best and effectively the only sensible window for Patagonia and Torres del Paine, with long daylight and open trails; it is also peak season, with higher prices and busier trails, particularly in January and February, when Chileans take their own holidays. If you can only travel in July or August, build the trip around the north, the centre and the ski resorts instead, and leave Patagonia for another time.
The north and the Atacama work all year thanks to their dry, stable climate, though nights are very cold whatever the season. Central Chile — Santiago, Valparaíso, the wine valleys — is at its best in spring and autumn (September to November and March to May), with fewer people and better prices; the grape harvest is in March and April. The ski resorts an hour from Santiago run from roughly June to September, which is the northern summer, and this is a genuine reason to come at that time of year. The Lake District in the south is much better in summer, since winter there is very wet. June, August and September tend to be the cheapest months to travel.
Chilean cooking sits between the sea and the farm. The essentials: the empanada de pino, a baked pastry filled with beef, onion, egg and an olive; pastel de choclo, a sweetcorn-topped meat pie baked in an earthenware dish; the completo, a hot dog buried under mashed avocado, chopped tomato and mayonnaise, eaten standing up; and machas a la parmesana, razor clams grilled with cheese. With more than 4,000 km of coastline, seafood is the strength: abalone, sea urchin, king crab in Patagonia, and the conger eel chowder that Pablo Neruda put into a poem. In the south, do not miss the curanto of Chiloé, cooked in a pit in the ground.
For drinking, this is a country of excellent and genuinely cheap wine, of the pisco sour — grape brandy, lime and sugar — and of the terremoto, or earthquake, a glass of young white wine with pineapple ice cream that is better than it sounds and stronger than it tastes. A meal in a cheap restaurant or the set lunch of the day runs about 6 to 10 USD; at a mid-range restaurant, 15 to 25 USD per person (verified July 2026). Tipping is usually 10% and normally appears as a suggested line on the bill, which you can accept or adjust; it is not automatically charged, so say yes or no when the card machine asks.
Chile is one of the safest and most stable countries in the region for visitors, but it is not risk-free and the picture has changed in recent years, so check your own government's current travel advice before you go — the US State Department, the UK Foreign Office, Global Affairs Canada and Australia's Smartraveller all publish country pages for Chile and update them as conditions change. The most common problem by far is opportunistic theft: pickpocketing and phone snatching in busy parts of Santiago (the centre, Estación Central, Bellavista) and in Valparaíso. Keep your phone out of sight on the street, do not leave bags on the back of a chair or valuables visible in a parked car, and turn down anyone offering to change money in the street. Ordinary big-city sense is enough.
No vaccinations are required to enter and healthcare standards are high. Tap water is drinkable in most cities. In the north and the altiplano — San Pedro de Atacama and especially the El Tatio geysers at over 4,000 m — altitude sickness is a real possibility: ascend gradually, drink plenty of water and skip alcohol for the first couple of days. Take travel insurance, and check that it covers hiking, high altitude and adventure sports if you are heading to Patagonia; private care is good but expensive for a foreigner without cover, and rescue in the parks is not free. Emergency numbers: 133 Carabineros (police), 131 SAMU (ambulance) and 132 for the fire service, free from any mobile phone (verified July 2026).
Chile is one of the most expensive countries in South America, so budget with room to spare — and if you are combining it with Peru and Bolivia, which is the standard overland route, expect your daily spend to roughly double the moment you cross the border. A backpacker manages on about 45 to 55 USD a day, a mid-range budget runs 70 to 100 USD, and a comfortable trip with hotels and restaurants passes 130 USD a day without difficulty (verified July 2026). Those figures exclude domestic flights and expensive entry fees such as Torres del Paine.
For reference (July 2026): a hostel dorm bed costs 15 to 25 USD; the set lunch of the day, 6 to 10 USD; a ride on the Santiago metro, a little under 1 USD; and a full-day tour in the Atacama or to the Valle de la Luna, 25 to 60 USD depending on the excursion. Patagonia and San Pedro de Atacama are noticeably more expensive than the rest of the country because of the logistics and the international demand. Cards are the sensible way to pay in the cities and most places take them; carry some cash for markets, rural buses and small towns. Booking domestic flights early, travelling by overnight sleeper bus and eating the set lunch rather than dinner are the three things that actually move the budget.
The language is Spanish, and Chilean Spanish has a reputation across Latin America for being the hardest to follow: fast, with the ends of words swallowed and a large vocabulary of its own (cachai for 'you know', al tiro for 'right away', micro for the bus). If you have studied Spanish elsewhere, expect to ask people to repeat themselves, and do not take it as a failure on your part. English is spoken in hotels, tour agencies and by younger people in Santiago, but it thins out fast in small towns and on rural routes, so a translation app and a few phrases are worth having. Chileans are friendly but somewhat more reserved than their neighbours; women greet with a kiss on the cheek among people who know each other, and punctuality is taken more seriously here than in much of the region.
Practical details worth knowing before you pack. Power is 220 V, 50 Hz with type C and L sockets, so devices from the US and Canada need both a plug adapter and a check that the device itself handles 220 V — laptop and phone chargers almost always do, but hairdryers, shavers and travel kettles frequently do not, and plugging one in without a voltage converter will destroy it. UK, Irish and Australian plugs also need an adapter, though the voltage is fine. Chile drives on the right. Connectivity is very good in cities and along the main highways: buy a local prepaid SIM from Entel, Movistar or WOM with your passport, or use an eSIM bought before you leave — either is far cheaper than roaming. And the advice everyone gives after their first trip: do not try to cover the whole country in a short holiday. The distances are enormous, and two or three regions done slowly beat six done from a plane seat.
The history of Chile is the history of a narrow, immensely long strip of land wedged between the Andes and the Pacific — more than 4,000 kilometres from north to south, but barely 180 kilometres wide on average — inhabited for millennia by peoples as different as the Aymara and Atacameño of the desert, the Diaguita of the valleys of the Norte Chico, the Mapuche of the centre and south, and the canoe peoples of the southern channels of Tierra del Fuego. Along its northeastern edge lies the Atacama Desert, the driest on the planet; at its southern extreme, the Patagonian ice fields and the Strait of Magellan; and 3,500 kilometres out to sea, remote Rapa Nui with its moai. Few countries in the world span such a range of climates and landscapes under a single flag.
Conquered by Spain from 1541 onwards under Pedro de Valdivia, Chile spent almost three centuries as a poor, agricultural and war-torn Captaincy General, marked by Mapuche resistance south of the Biobío River in the endless War of Arauco. Out of the First National Government Junta of 18 September 1810 and the independence proclaimed in 1818 — after the battles of Chacabuco (1817) and Maipú (1818), won alongside José de San Martín's Army of the Andes — there emerged a republic which, once the Portalian Constitution of 1833 was in force, stood out in South America for its early institutional stability. The nineteenth century brought territorial expansion: the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) against Peru and Bolivia, which annexed the rich nitrate territories of the north, and the Occupation of the Araucanía, which took the Mapuche lands of the south by force.
Read the full history of Chile →Pick a region and open each destination to see what to do, prices and how to get there.
These are the sources we cite most across this country's guides, with how many times each appears. Hard data —tickets, opening hours, requirements, transport— comes from the official source and carries the date we checked it. Restaurant and hotel picks come from guides and reviews, and we say so on each page.
