Chile

Chile is in the southern hemisphere, so summer is December–February and winter June–August — and because the country spans deserts to glaciers, the regions pull in opposite directions. Patagonia and Torres del Paine are a November–March trip, peaking in the windy heart of summer, with most services closed the rest of the year. The Atacama works all year, with cold high-altitude nights throughout and a quirk of summer (January–February) altiplano rains — the “Bolivian winter” — that can shut the high geyser and lagoon tours. And the ski season in the Andes above Santiago — Portillo, Valle Nevado — runs roughly June to September.

The practical upshot: you can’t combine Patagonia and skiing in the same trip, and the Atacama slots into either. December–February is the window for Patagonia (busy, windy) with no snow; June–August is for skiing while Patagonia is largely shut; the shoulder months of November and March–April give quieter Patagonia hiking. Decide the region first, and the calendar follows.

• you want to hike Torres del PaineSkipexpecting to turn up and walkGobooking refugios/campsites months ahead (Dec–Feb sells out) and the park pass online
• you’re paying a hotel billSkippaying in Chilean pesosGoUS dollars or a foreign card — it skips the 19% VAT
• you want both Patagonia and skiingSkipplanning them in one tripGopicking one region — the flipped seasons don’t overlap

Entry is simple and free: visitors from the US, EU, UK, Canada and Australia get 90 days visa-free, and the notorious US$160 reciprocity fee is long abolished — older guides still mention it, but it’s gone. You’re given a paper tourist card on arrival; keep it, because you show it on exit. Passports need only be valid for the stay.

The money quirk is worth planning around: foreign tourists are exempt from the 19% VAT on hotel rooms when paying in foreign currency (dollars cash or a foreign-issued card), which is a real saving — just confirm the hotel bills it as a “factura de exportación” and pay in dollars, not pesos, to keep it. The only form to file online is the free SAG agricultural declaration at the official ingresoachile.cl; it’s a customs step, not immigration, and the fake sites that charge for it (and phish your card details) should be ignored.

The SAG form and the lookalike scam are the one thing to get right before you fly: the genuine declaration at ingresoachile.cl is free, while copycat sites with similar names charge a “fee” and harvest your card data. There is no official charge to enter Chile — if a site asks for payment to process your arrival, it isn’t the government.

Chile is about 4,300 km from end to end, so for the big distances you fly: domestic routes radiate from Santiago to Calama (for the Atacama), Punta Arenas (for Patagonia) and, five hours out into the Pacific, Easter Island — served only by LATAM. Three carriers (LATAM, Sky, JetSmart) compete on the trunk routes, and JetSmart has been expanding, so booking ahead can be startlingly cheap.

For shorter hops, Chile’s long-distance buses are excellent — reclining “cama” and “salón cama” sleeper seats make the overnight runs comfortable — and a hire car comes into its own in the Atacama, the Lake District and on the Carretera Austral. In Santiago the Metro is clean and cheap; from the airport, book a transfer or use a ride app rather than the unlicensed-taxi touts.

What Chile is for is sheer diversity along its length, and the map reads top to bottom. In the north the Atacama gives lunar valleys, high salt flats, flamingo lagoons and the clearest skies anywhere (see the next section). The centre holds Santiago, its wine country and the UNESCO-listed port of Valparaíso, a tumble of painted hills and old funiculars. South of there the Lake District around Pucón brings volcanoes — the very active Villarrica among them, raised to a Yellow alert in September 2026 — lakes and hot springs, and the Chiloé archipelago adds its UNESCO wooden churches and stilt-house palafitos.

Then the country narrows into Patagonia — Torres del Paine, the Carretera Austral, the southern glaciers — and, far out in the Pacific, Easter Island. Those last two are the trips that need the most planning, and they get their own section below.

The Atacama is Chile’s northern headline: a high desert of salt flats, lunar valleys and geyser fields that works in any season, with the one caveat that the January–February altiplano rains can shut the highest tours. Base yourself in San Pedro de Atacama, acclimatise to the altitude (much of the sightseeing is above 3,000–4,300 m), and plan dawn starts for the El Tatio geysers and the flamingo lagoons.

After dark the desert turns to its other draw — the skies. The dryness and altitude give famously clear, dark nights, and nightly stargazing tours from San Pedro put you behind a telescope; just note that the public-visit programme at the giant ALMA radio observatory is suspended for now, so the experience is the commercial tours rather than the research site.

Torres del Paine is the planning pain-point. The classic W trek (4–5 days) and the longer O circuit (7–9 days, counterclockwise only) depend on beds in refugios and campsites run by two concessionaires, and in peak season these sell out three to six months ahead; the O requires every night booked in sequence, wild camping is banned, and CONAF rangers check reservations. Buy the park entry pass in advance at the official pasesparques.cl — 2026 replaced the old block system with single-day and 2–10-day passes — and note the O closes to new starts for winter around 31 October.

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) has its own gate. Every visitor completes the free FUI entry form online before boarding, and must show a return ticket and a confirmed stay in registered accommodation — it’s not an open-ended arrival, and the maximum stay is 30 days. On the island, the national park ticket (foreign adult US$100 since October 2025, valid ten days) is required for the moai sites, with Rano Raraku and Orongo limited to one entry each.

The single most common Chile mistake is treating Torres del Paine like a national park you can walk into. You can’t: with wild camping banned and every refugio/campsite booked out months ahead for summer, an unplanned W or O trek simply isn’t possible in peak season. Decide your dates early, book the beds in sequence, buy the pass online — and only then book the flights south.

Chilean food is hearty and seafood-rich. The everyday staples are the empanada de pino (baked, filled with beef, onion, egg and an olive), the loaded completo hot dog, and homely cazuela stew; the coast, fed by the cold Humboldt Current, delivers superb fish and shellfish — machas a la parmesana, congrio, and in Chiloé the pit-cooked curanto. Wash it down with the wine and the pisco sour in the figure.

For wine, head to the Central Valley — Colchagua and Maipo for the big reds, coastal Casablanca for crisp whites — an easy day trip or overnight from Santiago. Spanish is the language, and be warned that Chilean Spanish is famously fast and slang-heavy even to other Spanish speakers; English is common enough in tourism to get by.

The currency is the Chilean peso, and Chile is one of South America’s pricier countries, with Patagonia the most expensive leg — though cards and contactless (including phone payment) are accepted almost everywhere, with ATMs widespread. Tipping is a suggested, voluntary 10% prompted on table-service bills. On safety, Chile is among the region’s safer destinations but now carries a US Level 2 advisory, with extra caution for the Araucanía and Biobío regions (occasional Mapuche-conflict arson/attacks; a state of emergency in parts). The everyday risk is opportunistic theft in Santiago and Valparaíso — pickpocketing, bag-snatching, and an unlicensed-taxi scam at Santiago airport, so book transfers or use an app and keep valuables close.

Finally, this is deeply seismic country — home to the 1960 Valdivia earthquake (magnitude 9.5, the largest ever instrumentally recorded). Quakes are routine and buildings are built for them, so a tremor is rarely cause for alarm; the one rule that matters is the coastal one — after long or strong shaking, move to high ground immediately rather than wait for an official tsunami alert.

A volcano footnote for the Lake District: Villarrica, the near-perfect cone above Pucón, is one of the world’s most active volcanoes (it holds a persistent lava lake) and was raised to a Yellow alert in September 2026 after rising seismicity. That means heightened monitoring, not an eruption or evacuation — but if you’re climbing it or soaking in the area, check the SERNAGEOMIN/SENAPRED status first and follow guide instructions.