Experience the best of Arica

Arica sits on the Pacific in the Atacama Desert, close to the Peruvian border, and was Peruvian until the War of the Pacific. The headland of El Morro rises over the centre, with a hilltop museum telling of the battle of 1880, and the streets below are lined with palms and low buildings.

The Chinchorro people mummified their dead here some 7,000 years ago, before the Egyptians, and the settlements and mummies of their culture are now a World Heritage listing, with finds displayed in a museum in the nearby Azapa Valley. Green valleys cut through the desert, and inland the road climbs to Lauca National Park, where volcanoes rise over high lakes and flamingos feed in the marshes, and to the village of Putre.

Fresh ceviche and fish caught off the coast are the local dishes, and the plump olives of the Azapa Valley are well known across Chile. The beaches, from the calm Playa La Lisera to the surf of El Gringo, are warm by Chilean standards. Almost no rain falls, and the city is nicknamed the city of the eternal spring.