Best Chile Day Trips & Things to Do

Stretching like a 4,000-kilometer ribbon along the Pacific, Chile is a land of "geological poetry" where every climate on Earth seems to coexist. To the north, the Atacama Desert offers Mars-like landscapes of salt flats and geysers under the clearest stargazing skies on the planet. Journeying south, the central valleys yield world-class Cabernet Sauvignons before the terrain breaks into the fractured fjords and glaciers of Torres del Paine National Park. The capital, Santiago, sits in a ring of snow-capped peaks, while the colorful, chaotic hills of Valparaíso provide a bohemian seaside escape. For those seeking the truly remote, the mysterious moai statues of Easter Island stand as silent sentinels in the middle of the ocean.