Things to do
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Morro de Arica
The 139 metre headland over the port, taken by Chilean troops in a short assault in June 1880 that ended the campaign for the province. A military museum and a Christ figure stand on the flat summit, reached by road or by a stepped path off Calle Colón that takes about fifteen minutes.
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Playa Chinchorro
The long city beach north of the river mouth, wide and flat with a gentle shelf that makes it the calmest swimming water in Arica. Lifeguards work the marked sections in summer, the surf schools set up at the southern end, and the sand stays usable through the winter months.
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Catedral de San Marcos
A cast iron church designed in the workshop of Gustave Eiffel, shipped from France in pieces and bolted together on the plaza in 1876 after a tsunami flattened the old town. The whole structure is metal down to the Gothic tracery, and the doors open through the day around services.
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Cuevas de Anzota
A run of sea caves and undercut cliffs south of the port, worked for guano in the nineteenth century and now linked by a boardwalk and stair circuit along the shore. The walk takes about two hours with the sea breaking below it, and the gate closes in the late afternoon.
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Hotel Arica
A low hotel of the 1960s on the cliff above La Lisera, with bungalows set through gardens and a pool cut into the rock over the water. It is the long standing address in the city for anyone wanting the beach at the door, and the walk into the centre takes about twenty minutes.
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Iglesia de Parinacota
A whitewashed adobe church of 1789 in a hamlet at 4,400 metres, its interior covered in colonial wall paintings of the Passion and a walking table kept behind a rope. A villager holds the key and opens the door for arrivals, and the surrounding houses are lived in only part of the year.
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Lake
Lago Chungará
One of the highest lakes on earth at about 4,520 metres, spread under the Parinacota volcano with giant coots and flamingos on its shallows. A CONAF post and a short shore path sit at the roadside, and walking is slow at that altitude, so most visits are brief and stay near the water.
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Museo Arqueológico San Miguel de Azapa
The University of Tarapacá collection in an old olive press in the Azapa valley, holding Chinchorro mummies prepared some two thousand years before the first Egyptian ones. The Chinchorro sites were listed by UNESCO in 2021, and colectivo taxis run out to the museum from central Arica through the day.
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Parque nacional Lauca
A high altiplano park on the Bolivian border, most of it above 4,000 metres, with vicuña herds, bofedal wetlands and the twin cones of the Payachata over everything. Ruta 11 is paved the whole way from Arica, and the climb is steep enough that guided days carry oxygen for passengers.