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Located 1.853 km to the North of Santiago, Iquique is a privileged city where the sun shines almost the whole year round.
It has all necessary facilities that connect it with the rest of the country such as airport, highways and all kinds of transportation to travel throughout Chile or to go abroad.
Iquique is also well known for being a paradise for those who love to go shopping and at the same time have fun and recreation.
Its more than 160 km of cost, with warm water beaches, fisher’s bays, allow tourists to take the most advantage of special activities where action, sports and recreation are mixed, of which recreational sport as well as scuba diving practice particularly stand out.
Other places of interest are the pampas found in the outskirts of the city that is surrounded by small towns, kept alive by the saltpeter mines settled near the city, and that today are true ghost towns, abandoned by all their inhabitants after the mines closed. These towns bring back memories of the natural saltpeter exploitation, which was the motor that gave life to the region by the end of the XIX Century and that are currently only ruins that show the former offices, two of which, Humberstone and Santa Laura have been declared World Heritage Sites.
The presence of the Rupestrian Art brings back memories of the Tiwanaku Culture, especially with its geoglyphs “Atacama Giant”, located 84 km Northeast of Iquique.
In the Andean Altiplano (High Plateau) Aymaras and Atacamanean communities, which still preserve their ancestral customs dedicated to the cultivation of quinoa and the breeding of camelidae that live together with the flamencos.
In the Isluga Volcano National Park we can see the high snow- capped peaks, the aimaras’ ceremonial hills, wide plateaus with native vegetation, lagoons, rivers, and wetlands with a rich bird life and awesome geysers.
This is also a territory of tamarugos’ woods, immense salt extensions and hot spring water, such as Mamiña or Pica oasis, located 45 km far from the “Pintados” geoglyphs.
Folklore and religious expressions maintain their pre-Colombian features. Their maximum expression is the well known celebration of La Tirana.
In this destination it is possible to observe the flora and fauna, to do photography, nautical sports, recreational fishing, paragliding, trekking and sand boarding
Fuente:sernatur.cl
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