Tours in Santiago

Sernatur, the national tourism agency, maintains a listing of experienced individual tour guides who will take you on a half-day tour of Santiago and the surrounding area for about 25,000 pesos. These tours are a great way to get your bearings when you have just arrived in the city. They can also greatly enrich your visit. In museums, for example, they often provide information not generally available to the public and are especially helpful in museums with little or no signage in English.

Altué Expediciones arranges adventure trips such as white-water rafting on nearby rivers and hiking to the mouths of volcanoes. Chilean Travel Services and Sportstour handle tours of both Santiago and other parts of Chile. Chip Travel has several interest tours available, including a "human rights legacy" tour of sites that are reminders of dictator Augusto Pinochet's 17-year regime.

With more than a dozen locations, Turismo Cocha, founded in 1951, is one of the city's biggest private tour operators. It arranges tours of the wineries of the Cajón del Maipo and the beach resorts of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, in addition to the usual city tours. It also has offices in the domestic and international terminals of the airport as well as in some of the larger hotels.

Tour Operators

Altué Expediciones (Encomenderos 83, Las Condes. 2/232-1103. 2/233-6799. www.altue.com). Chilean Travel Services (Antonio Bellet 77, Office 101, Providencia. 2/251-0400. 2/251-0423. www.ctsturismo.cl). Chip Travel (Antonio Bellet 77, Office 101, Providencia. 2/735-9044. 2/735-2267. www.chipsites.com).

Sportstour (Moneda 970, Santiago Centro. 2/549-5200. 2/698-2981. www.sportstour.cl). Turismo Cocha (Av. El Bosque Norte 0430, Las Condes. 2/464-1000. 2/464-1010. www.cocha.com).