Luxury Chile Voyages

Among the planet's remotest specks of land, Alejandro Selkirk lies a further 180km out to sea, its basalt cliffs rising sheer from the swell where fur seals haul out and petrels wheel overhead. Fewer travellers have set foot here in a decade than crowd a single big-ship gangway on any morning. Anchoring offshore, SeaDream III lowers her watersports marina so you can Zodiac beneath cascading waterfalls and snorkel water so clear it seems lit from below.

The capital of Chile's mineral north opens onto the surreal Atacama. Photograph La Portada, the great sea-carved stone arch rising from the surf just up the coast, then venture inland toward salt flats, flamingo lagoons and the clearest day skies on the planet, home to the ALMA observatory. It is also the natural launch point for San Pedro de Atacama's lunar valleys. A frontier of extraordinary light and space.

Chile's northern frontier, where the Atacama, the driest desert on Earth, tumbles to the Pacific. Climb El Morro headland for sweeping ocean views and its stirring war history, admire the prefabricated San Marcos Cathedral engineered by Gustave Eiffel, and meet the Chinchorro mummies, older than Egypt's pharaohs. Drive the Azapa Valley for plump olives and geoglyph-etched hillsides. The doorstep to the great desert beyond.

Twin city to genteel La Serena and the gateway to the fabled Elqui Valley. Wind inland past vineyards to Pisco Elqui, tasting the grape brandy at its source, then stay after dark for stargazing at Mamalluca, beneath some of the darkest, clearest skies on Earth. By day, stroll La Serena's neo-colonial streets and long Pacific beaches, or the Cross of the Third Millennium. SeaDream III's late stay makes those legendary starlit days possible.

Nowhere on earth feels quite so far beyond as Rapa Nui. Stand before the fifteen restored moai of Ahu Tongariki at dawn, their monolithic backs to a molten Pacific; wander the Rano Raraku quarry where half-carved giants still sleep in the volcanic tuff; and climb to Orongo's birdman village perched on the rim of a crater lake. An overnight at anchor lets you savour a Polynesian umu feast ashore long after the day-trippers' flights have lifted away.

A duty-free beach city framed by a colossal wall of desert dune. Wander the timber mansions and boardwalks of Baquedano Street, relics of the nitrate boom, then step into the eerie saltpetre ghost town of Humberstone, silent since the works closed. Adrenaline-seekers paraglide from Cerro Dragon straight down onto Cavancha beach. Sun-lounging, history and thrills, all within easy reach of SeaDream III's berth.

Here reality out-storied fiction: castaway Alexander Selkirk survived four years alone on this Juan Fernandez isle, seeding Defoe's legend. Trek to Selkirk's Lookout, the very saddle from which he scanned an empty horizon for rescue, dive for the prized spiny lobster, and seek the ruby-throated Juan Fernandez firecrown, a hummingbird found nowhere else on earth. With the marina folded open, kayaks and Zodiacs reach coves no large ship could ever consider.

Chile's bohemian port tumbles down forty-odd hills in a mosaic of tin-clad houses, groaning funiculars and Latin America's boldest street art. Ride the century-old Ascensor Reina Victoria up to Cerro Alegre, lunch among the ghosts of poets at Pablo Neruda's La Sebastiana, then slip inland to the Casablanca Valley for Sauvignon Blanc drawn straight from the barrel. As your world voyage begins, the intimacy of just 230 guests turns a UNESCO labyrinth into your own unhurried discovery.