Experience the best of San Antonio

San Antonio stands at the mouth of the Maipo River on the Pacific coast of central Chile, west of Santiago. Its harbour is among the busiest in the country for cargo, but the old fishing cove still runs along the waterfront, where boats land their catch and pelicans and gulls wait for scraps. The town climbs the hills behind in streets of low houses.

The coast nearby is a string of beach resorts, among them Llolleo, Cartagena, El Tabo and El Quisco. Further up the coast at Isla Negra is the house where the poet Pablo Neruda lived and is buried, now a museum filled with his collections of ships' figureheads, shells and bottles. The mouth of the Maipo, with its dunes and wetlands, is a place for watching birds.

Seafood comes straight from the boats: machas, or razor clams, baked with Parmesan, empanadas filled with shellfish, conger eel soup and fried fish. The cold Humboldt Current keeps the sea chilly and the mornings foggy, and the beach season belongs to January and February, when people from Santiago fill the sand.