The tour guide, Rene, was affable and knowledgeable about the history of Chile and the native people. Between visits to wineries, we especially enjoyed the trip to the museum, which is a treasure the larger population may miss because of its location 3 hours south of the largest city, Santiago. The wineries were magnificent in their ambience and character, while the tastings were enough to justify Chile’s position as a tour de force in winemaking!

The driver and guide were brilliant- professional but friendly and extremely knowledgeable. We saw so much and photo opportunities were great. Perfect bi-lingual explanations.Thanks to Paola.

I went with a group for the tour. The second stop was the tastings. The wines were good but the ones I like require to store for 11 to 15 years. We also did not try the best wines that included the diablo portion. I did like the origins of the diablo. This should have occurred before doing wine tasting.

This was a great tour, we were so lucky with the weather and the ride was very smooth. We got to see dolphins and whales on the way to the island and then penguins and birds when we arrived. Next we went to another island and listened and watched the sea lions (very noisy) and saw tons of cormorons! The only thing to be careful about is the time, we expected to be done around 11 am since the meeting point was 6:30 am and the estimate was 4.5 hours, but we didn’t get done until 12:30 pm. It was great to have the extra time, but just plan carefully if you are on a tight schedule.

This is the best vineyard in Santiago. We are English speakers. There are only 4 premium (70 minutes and 3 wine tasting sessions) English tours a day. Email them for time slots as it may change. Tips: book with the winery directly and use Uber to get there. It is both cheaper and time efficient. You use up most of your 4 hours on travelling by coach if you use agency as they will need to pick up guests from different parts of the city.

“The average hike length is 8 hours but I’ve had many trips that have been over 11” ; the somewhat ‘menacing’, certainly ‘sobering’ words of my Guide Valentina, as we prepared for the ‘off’. Looking up, I could feel the acute angle of my neck ! I’d been told - warned - that this officially categorised ‘challenging’ activity had within it 3 phases, the first being an ascent taking circa 90 minutes. An aerobic workout that definitely tested. And replenishing water bottles from the gushing rivers/falls was as necessary as it was a relief. Phase 2 - through the forest - was easier, albeit each ‘down’ was met with the next ‘up’. The occasional returning hiker’s telling grin - in sync with a recurring ‘keep going’ salutation - was commensurate with a presumed sense of descending joy ! The 3rd and final ‘stretch’ was arguably the hardest. You’re 10Km ‘in’ at this stage and ahead of you is a last 1Km that takes a good 50 minutes to complete. You’re clambering over uneven rocks & small boulders, all the time ascending. You sweat. You ache. You occasionally entertain the odd expletive. This is arguably as much a mental resilience issue as it is physical. Then…there ‘they’ reveal themselves ! South, Central & North, alongside Condors Nest. Magnificent ! Dramatic. Imposing. ‘Mighty’ ! Beautiful too. And all of this with the tranquility of a shimmering lake in the foreground. Any hint of negativity dissipates, all doubts are forgotten. Because no doubt - it’s worth it ! ‘That’ sight before you impacts…and with it, there’s a powerful sense of achievement. Memorable. And being one of the first to reach the destination brought privilege, in that there was a discernible peace about the environment, that later - after eating our lunch - had been replaced with lots of busyness and queuing for the best photo opportunity. Don’t be lulled into a false belief that the return to base is straightforward. Occasionally slipping & sliding on the rocks in the first phase, equates to a need for a more minded purpose of footing. Hiking protocol dictates that you give way to Ascenders. For each ‘down’ there continues to be an ‘up’…right to the end. But Vally telling me ‘You’re the real deal Hiker JP’ at the end of 7 hours, 20 minutes was a moment of magical affirmation.

Two things I want to mention at the start: 1. The weather was OK but not brilliant 2. We saw Whales, but they didn't... you know... jump out of the water and generally be spectacular. Both of those things can hardly be blamed on the tour, of course. So leaving that aside, I really loved the tour. We were only about 30 people which left room for a more relaxed and easier connection between ourselves and the crew, which was genuinely so lovely and friendly and nice. And the scenery (amazing landscapes and glacer) and the animals we saw (albatrosses, cormoranes, sea lions, penguins, humpback whales...) were absolutely stunning. Totally loved it!

We had our own hire car and did an early morning drive up to El Tatio - we left San Pedro at 04.30 and arrive at El Tatio at 06.15 when it was just starting to get light. The c80km drive is hairy especially after the first 25 km. You need to be pretty confident to drive in the dark on the sometimes very rough and stoney road - it’s well signposted so that is not an issue. There are some sharp curves and some very steep parts of the road which you really only see when you return in daylight. Lots of white tour vans do this trip every day so you start getting overtaken by them 10-20 km before your destination. Ideally get behind another car and drive 80-100 metres behind them as they will show you the road and the odd bad pothole. Geysers are good in the early morning because the air temperatures are below freezing - around minus 5C on the day we visited though soon warms up as the sun rises. The geysers and surrounding scenery are beautiful - worth the trip but my wife would say take a tour the next time. We spend about 2 hours at the geysers. We stopped off at the Puritama hot springs at 09.30 on way home - the timings worked very well - book you tickets for hot springs in advance. We just paid at entrance for El Tatio geysers.

Great tour with a knowledgeable guide, learn all about the stars and have the opportunity to see Jupiter and Saturn through the telescopes. Ends with drinks and snacks

WARNING! We loved Chile, Patagonia, and the Chilean People ... (for example the 5-star La Peninsula Experience, see later review) ... ... EXCEPT for this tour group. This should serve as a warning to all passengers thinking of paying for this tour -- be careful what you say during boarding, particularly if you are not a latino or a native Spanish speaker. A brief synopsis: We arrived 17 minutes early and were third in line to board the GREY III powered catamaran. Then, immediately prior to boarding two parties of 10 and 24 people showed up and cut in front of us. Because the two people ahead of us had tickets for this quantity of passengers, 34 people (!) were allowed to board ahead of us ... ALL of them were speaking Spanish, and appeared to be Latinos. I was gradually nudged out of the way by this large group, and when I nudged back, the boarding agent saw MY action and denied me entrance to the boat ... much like when a football / soccer player is fouled hard, and when he pushes back, HE (the second player) is the one given the yellow card. With this tour group, if you are non-latino, be prepared to be pushed to the back of the line ... and whatever you do, DO NOT speak up for your rights to board in your turn. Apparently, there is no notion of fairness and line management in this tour organization. eg. if you were to: "hold a place in line for your wife and kids" -- perhaps 1 to 3 people, then by all means, that's reasonable, but 34 people on a boat that seats 60 ... where the VIEW at the front REALLY matters ... that is very unfair in my opinion. Racist overtones in play, without a doubt. The irony here: in the United States, I teach science to young, disadvantaged Latino-Americans ... who face racism all the time, and I always stress to NOT see color or culture when interacting with others ... to treat everyone fairly. Too bad the rest of the World doesn't conduct themselves the same way. - Ray, Northern California

While the tour itself and what we saw was excellent I strongly recommend that you never never ever book through viator. They have ruined my vacation with a complete lack of communication and a total failure on logistics. The website says this tour is 4 hours so I made plans accordingly. It was over 5 hours and I missed my 2nd tour completely. Now Viator is pointing the finger at the tour operator and they are pointing the finger at Viator. I booked with Viator. Viator took my money. So Viator has a legal responsibility to fix this but all they have sent me are ridiculous emails about how much they care, but they have actually done NOTHING. And after I told the tour guide about the scheduling issue, he made no effort to help, place a phone call for me......NOTHING. Then the tour agency tried to rewrite history and made up even more excuses as to why they have no responsibility but they are equally at fault when they did nothing to mitigate the situation. There are many tour companies in San Pedro where you can book direct and not have to deal with Viator making endless excuses for failures while claiming they are SOOOO concerned. Take advantage of those and stay away from Viator! But there is one thing that Viator does really well - hit you with endless spam, emails and pop-ups trying to sell you more tours after the ones they booked failed. That is the only part of their service that is absolutely guaranteed.

While the tour itself was excellent I strongly recommend that you never never ever book through viator again. They have ruined my vacation with the complete lack of communication and a total failure on logistics. I was told five different things about pickup.... It will be at your hotel. It will not be at your hotel. It will be at 2:00 pm.... Be sure to be ready!!! They finally picked me up at 3:10 p.m.. the tour I booked today came back over an hour late. And the afternoon tour I booked today was a complete no-show even though I have a ticket. Viator does not communicate with the local tour operators and they don't care that a tour I paid for was a complete no-show. Don't make the same mistake I did.... You can book direct with all the local vendors here in San Pedro and save yourself a lot of stress and disappointment. But the one thing you will definitely get from viator? Dozens and dozens of marketing emails pop-ups and annoying spam. That part of the experience is guaranteed.

I took this excellent tour with Turismo Layana and the terrific guide was Christian. It was a very early predawn pick up and the company sent a text the night before confirming the pick up time from my hotel. It was over an hours drive out to the site of the geysers where the altitude was approximately 4,000m. The varied geysers were amazing and while standing beside bubbling boiling water and with many layers of clothing, warm hat and gloves, it was still extremely cold. We also made a stop at wetlands in crater lakes with an abundance of bird life including flamingos and even vicuñas ( relative of lamas) coming to have a drink. Such an amazing experience. Breakfast was set up on a table on another isolated stop out in the desert. We could make bread rolls with avocado, ham and cheese and tea/coffee and cake. We arrived back at San Pedro de Atacama about 11.30am after a totally unique experience

Natty led us on the highlights tour of Valpo. Starting at the port, then taking a funicular and seeing the sights higher up some of the 44 hills of Valpo. Saw lots of great street art.

We didn't do a formal tour, we did self drive. The general view is that you should try to get to the geyser field at dawn and we did that. It was definitely worth it. The sight of the sun rising over the surrounding peaks as the fumaroles smoke and the geysers bubble is fantastic. The colours are spectacular as are the sounds of the bubbling and hissing. Things to be aware of: you need to buy a ticket online beforehand, and the website isn't the easiest to use; it's a reasonably long drive so you need to leave plenty of time; if you're not comfortable driving on ungraded dirt roads with a lot of narrow points and twists and turns, in the dark, take a tour; it's cold before dawn at high altitude, very cold! Most of these are obvious but a lot of people we saw seemed unprepared and it's such an amazing place it'd be a pity to not enjoy it for want of a pair of gloves! On the way back to San Pedro watch out for the flamingos and the amazing giant cacti. You may also like to combine your return trip with a visit to Puritama, a nice way to warm up and relax after the early start.