Atacama Desert

An enjoyable trip and you do cover vast distances but for a 13 day trip too much time is spent hanging around in airports.
I note that the itinerary has been tweaked for 2025 so this may help a bit.
One word of warning for solo travellers (apart from the excessive single supplement) is that there are very few group meals. Our guide did not stay in the group hotel at Santiago so for first couple of nights you’re left to your own devices for evening meals. We then flew north to Atacama and again no group meals. Only once we were in the Lake District did guide arrange a group meal one night and then there were group meals all the time in Patagonia.
Scenery in Patagonia was fantastic and we had a couple of decent walks.
Apart from San Pedro de Atacama the hotels were all good although wifi often only in reception area.
Credit and debit cards are accepted everywhere so you don’t need much cash. Wine is cheaper than beer or soft drinks and evening meals no dearer than UK.
Be prepared for a lot of early starts and quite a few breakfast boxes.

Linda Stalker Discover Chile (2024)

Wonderful

Kay Collins Discover Chile (2024)

This trip was a great way to see the top highlights while leaving you wanting to explore more! Perfect ‘Discovery’ trip! There are a lot of flights and the airline can move around the timings so you have to be flexible and open to late nights/early starts. There really is no other way to cover so much distance in just 2 weeks. Its well worth the travel as you get to see 2 completely different sides of Chile, the Desert and Salt flats of the North and the Lakes and Mountains of the South, both equally beautiful but very different. The food wasn’t as expensive as I thought, similar pricing to London restaurants so by no means cheap but not unaffordable and if you take some snacks with you its easy to skip lunches as dinner portions in every restaurant we went to are very generous. The hotels were clean, spacious and comfortable. The only pool in use (we were early in the season) was in San Pedro. Both optional excursions are well worth doing but I would recommend doing a little research into star constellations before going to help things make more sense as its a lot of information to take in. Our guide Miguel was very knowledgeable and clearly loves his country and the outdoors we were in good hands especially in the National parks as he knows the area well. He is also a keen photographer so we were going to great photo locations and he was always willing to stop the bus whenever wildlife or a good photo angle was spotted! There are long drives, but the scenery was so beautiful that the drives were just as special as the walks and plenty of stops to stretch our legs or take a photo or toilet stop.

Melissa Hammond Discover Chile (2024)