1/7/2024 0 Comments Lan chile airpassWHEN TO GO: You can visit the Atacama just about any time of the year as it's always dry. An Italian dinner for two, with wine, runs about $22. Pica's Mia Papa (Balmaceda 118) has a wonderful garden with lemon trees and a worshipful dog who watches over diners. The Hosteria San Pedro's restaurant tries a bit too hard to be "continental," but it serves decent feed for about $55 for two, including wine. Dinner runs about $32 for two, with wine. Meals are served in a series of rooms, including a semiformal dining room and picnic tables set around a huge fireplace. In San Pedro, La Casona on Caracoles Street offers a full range of good, well-priced food, from steaks to spaghetti to vegetarian dishes (rare in Chile). Good to very good Chilean wines are well priced in all but the fanciest restaurants. Inland, there's a lot of beef and the same farm-raised Chilean sea bass and salmon listed on Washington menus. There are a surprising number of Italian and - very cheap - Chinese restaurants called Chifas, though negotiating menus that start with tsjap sui can prove difficult. The seafood provided by local fishing villages to the coastal towns is always fresh and usually wonderful. WHERE TO EAT: Restaurants are quite good and relatively inexpensive in the larger towns. Note: If you pay in foreign currency or with a foreign credit card, hotels are not required to collect the 18 percent national sales tax. It has a very small plunge pool and a lovely walled garden, plus its staff makes excellent pisco sours using local lemons. In Pica, we chose the tiny but wonderful Hotel Los Emilios (213 Lord Cochrane, telephone 011-56-57-74-1126), where doubles run about $35, with breakfast. The hotel has a good restaurant and a huge solar-heated swimming pool. In San Pedro, we stayed at the Hosteria San Pedro (Solcor Street, telephone 011-56-55-85-1011), where small, well-appointed thatched bungalows are $91 a night, including breakfast. The fanciest ones, however, can cost about $90, while the ultra-posh Explora resort (telephone 011-56-2-2066060) outside San Pedro de Atacama starts at more than $400 a night, double. WHERE TO STAY: The larger coastal cities and oasis towns all have good hotels, which generally run $30 to $50 a night for two, with breakfast. There are also bus tours to individual attractions, and many of the larger hotels have their own van-based tours. Gas is cheap by European standards, expensive by American, at about $3 a gallon. Most of the major car rental companies offer rentals, starting at about $35 a day (plus 18 percent tax), in all those cities. Round-trip tickets from Santiago cost more than air passes - $458 to $512 if purchased in the United States through a travel agent, or less if booked on the Lan Chile Web site (You can also reach the north by bus, about $80 one way, but it's a long, long trip. GETTING AROUND: The best jumping-off places for the Atacama are the northern cities of Antofagasta, Iquique, Arica and Calama. The Air Pass tickets, which must be bought outside Chile, cost $350 if you fly on another carrier. If you fly on Lan Chile or American, its code-share partner, you will be eligible for $250 Chile Air Pass tickets, good for three internal one-way flights. GETTING THERE: American, Delta, United and Lan Chile offer service from BWI or Dulles to Santiago, Chile's capital, connecting through Atlanta, Miami or Dallas-Fort Worth.
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