Santiago and coastal tour of Chile
Typically you will be sharing your experiences with between 4-20 like minded travellers (depending on the trip, operator and how many others are booked on the trip) and you'll have a group leader with you. Whether you are travelling alone or with friends its good value, and a great way to meet new people! While itineraries are pre-planned there is some flexibility and you'll have plenty of privacy. This trip will appeal to travellers of all ages who enjoy meeting new people as well as seeing new places.
How this holiday makes a difference
Environment
Part of the proceeds from this tour will be donated to the Corporación Bosques de Zapallar (CBZ), to support their conservation work in El Boldo Park, a private protected area that harbours almost 70 hectares (173 acres) of a unique and highly threatened forest that grows thanks to the fog that rolls in from the Pacific Ocean and is a remnant of ancient times.
We have carefully selected hotels with clear environmental policies in both Santiago and Viña del Mar. GEN Suite Hotel & Spa is Santiago’s first green hotel. Its architectural design involved sustainability measures such as the use of renewable energies, including solar panels in most of the rooms to generate electricity. The establishment has an environmental policy and applies best practices in its operations. Staff and guests are encouraged to contribute to the hotel’s recycling efforts and on each floor there are storage facilities to separate rubbish accordingly. The property is also a certified member of the “One tourist, One tree” campaign launched by CONAF (the Chilean government agency in charge of protected areas) and Trekking Chile Foundation to compensate for greenhouse gas generation caused by a guest’s average travel.
San Martín Hotel, in Viña del Mar, also has an environmental policy and shows clear concern about climate change. It has received the “Green Guest” certification and has an environmental and carbon reduction education program for its guests, encouraging environmentally friendly attitudes such as turning air conditioning and heating off when not in the room and recycling. Each guest receives a brochure with information on climate change and ways they can make a difference.
In addition, we take the following precautions to minimise the environmental impacts of our trips:
We only organise trips for small groups (up to 12 people) to avoid overloading local infrastructure of the places we visit, particularly those that are environmentally sensitive.
We dispose of litter responsibly, carrying our own trash bags on each trip and recycling rubbish accordingly once the excursion is over. By doing this, we are also contributing to social and environmental projects that benefit from recycling different materials in Chile. For example, The Committee for the Defence of Flora and Fauna (CODEFF) recycles glass to support conservation projects, while empty Tetra Pak containers are recycled by the A Roof for Chile Foundation to obtain funds for their campaign to build houses for families without a home.
We give guidelines to our clients on how to act in the natural environment and respect wildlife. For example, we urge them not to feed wildlife, not to buy products made from endangered species, and to stay within the defined trails to avoid trampling vegetation and soil when visiting natural areas.
Community
We operate our trips in a way that encourages positive cultural exchanges. Through our excursions, our clients get to interact with locals and spend enough time with them to learn about their way of life, customs, traditions and interests. We attempt to give an insight and understanding of the host culture and community to our clients so that they can gain more from visiting them. In addition to the pre-trip information we send about the destination, our guides –who are all Chilean- are always ready to provide in-depth explanations about the people our travellers encounter and to translate for them any questions they may have for their hosts.
In this tour, most of the accommodations and restaurants visited are locally-owned businesses, thus you will be contributing to sustaining jobs for local community members who hire local Chilean workers. The restaurants we go to offer traditional Chilean cuisine and have prepared special menus for our travellers that highlight typical Chilean ingredients in their plates, avoiding foreign produce. For example, Posada del Parque is a small hotel and restaurant run by the family that has owned the land, which covers part of the Mantagua Wetland, for 75 years. They are a small family business working to promote responsible tourism in this fragile environment and to conserve it for future generations.
We promote typical Chilean handicrafts through our tours, taking our travellers to places with shops offering high-quality authentic products. One of our principles is fair trade. We advise our clients about local bargaining customs and give guidelines to reasonable prices.
Two of the excursions in this tour use the Metro (underground) to reach our destinations within Santiago. We encourage our clients to use public transport during their stay. Even if the trains are crowded, it gives them a good feeling of how Chileans move around the city and they can get a much better idea of the place by walking down the streets instead of just driving through them in a vehicle.
We encourage travellers to respect the local culture and to try to learn as much as they can from the people they interact with. We advise our clients to ask for permission before taking photos of people. We do not promote giving money for photos as it can encourage a begging culture.
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