Day trip from Santiago: Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, and the Casablanca Valley

While Santiago is Chile’s largest city, one thing that makes it so appealing is the many and varied places that are just a quick drive away. Many of these places, like Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, and the Casablanca Valley are destinations unto themselves. They are worth more than a day if you can spare it. However, taking a day trip from Santiago gives you a chance to explore several different places, with the convenience of a home base in the city.

On our recent trip to Chile, Brian and I spent a full day exploring some of the best destinations near to Santiago: the coastal towns of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, with a stop for some wine in Chile’s famous Casablanca Valley. Here’s what to know.

First Things First: The Lay of the Land

This map shows you the geographic location of these three places. You can see that Valparaíso and Viña del Mar are very close to each other and the Casablanca Valley is en route between these cities and Santiago. Therefore, you’ll want to visit the Casablanca Valley either on the way to or from these cities.

Also as you can see, the Casablanca Valley is on the way no matter how you slice it. So to be all the way over here and drive right through the Casablanca Valley without stopping even for a little bit…believe it or not, jail.

We didn’t want to go to jail, so we picked a cute winery called Bodegas RE, before heading on to Valparaíso. The Casablanca Valley really deserves its own full day. This time however, one winery sufficed, as we’d arrived in Chile after a week of tastings in Argentina’s Uco Valley. At this point, I already had my fill of wine. (You turn 45 and all of a sudden you start reaching limits you didn’t know you had.)

Day Trip Transportation Options

Sadly, Chile doesn’t have a comprehensive train network (our preferred method to travel). However, the connecting roads and highways are nicely paved, spacious, and well marked. There are several options to get from Santiago to the outer areas:

1. Public transport (bus)
2. Rental car
3. Private driver
4. Group tour (bus or van)

If you want to visit all three of these places in a single day, any option except for public transport will work. We hired a driver because we didn’t need a car in Santiago and didn’t want the hassle just for one day. A group tour wasn’t appealing because we wanted more flexibility than they offer. In general also, I don’t love taking tours to wineries because they take you to (by definition) the most touristic ones.

Transport Options from Santiago

Public Bus

A public bus will get you from Santiago Central to Valparaíso in about two hours. However, once there, it will be very hard to see all of Valparaíso solely on foot. While there are a couple of funiculars to go up and down the hills, there is no comprehensive public transport. Ubers and shared cabs are an option though.

There are two other drawbacks to arriving via bus:

1. You will be beholden to a bus schedule versus being able to arrive and depart when you want.
2. Neither the bus station in Santiago nor in Valparaíso are particularly safe areas, especially if you are a tourist. That goes double if you don’t speak Spanish.

Needless to say, I don’t recommend taking the bus.

Drive Yourself

If you rent a car in Santiago you’ll easily be able to drive yourself to Valparaíso. The highway between the two cities is very well maintained. There is good signage and some of the views are pretty nice too. What’s more, you’ll go through the Casablanca Valley where you can detour for a winery tour or tasting.

There are two drawbacks to driving yourself:

1. We read a lot about tourists having their tires purposefully cut in Valparaíso. Then the tire-cutters would rob them when they pulled over to change it. This could be unfounded and was not our own experience but we read enough about it to opt out of driving ourselves.
2. The roads in Valpo’s hills are steep, narrow, and winding. They are full of blind turns and not well marked. There is no way we would have had an enjoyable experience in this town if we had to navigate those streets on our own. None, whatsoever.

Hire a Driver

This is probably the most expensive choice but it is what we did and it was worth every single peso. For one, we had the most incredible driver, Leo (who I found on trip advisor and man, was he a great find!). He picked us up at our place in Santiago (arriving early) and drove us to both Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, stopping on the way at the winery I had picked out in the Casablanca Valley. He showed us a ton of sites in Valparaíso and we spent all our time enjoying the area, walking around, exploring, and learning about the city from his well-versed commentary.

Having an experienced driver/tour guide was absolutely the best use of our time and maximized our short stay in the area. I sound like an advertisement for Leo (and I guess I am, although unpaid) but he was that good. His car was spacious, clean, and comfortable. He knew the city very well, and he also knew many of the Valparaíso locals.

Another thing that made us glad that we were not driving ourselves is the culture around parking. Everywhere we went there were people squatting in parking spaces and wanting to be “tipped” for letting you have it. We would have thought this was a scam but Leo paid them, and happily. Apparently this is a normal custom. Another normal custom is to tip a person who hangs around your car “protecting” it while it is parked. Again, I would have shooed that person away in a heartbeat but Leo found their services to be valuable and all part of the system. It was enormously freeing to not have to manage any logistics or cultural nuances around driving and parking.

There is however, one drawback to hiring a driver:

1. It is expensive.

Group Tour

There are several group tours you can take that are priced in between public transport and private driver. I’m sure some of these are really good although there’s not one I can personally recommend.

Casablanca Valley

The Casablanca Valley is one hour by car from Santiago. It is a young wine region, developed in the 1980’s which makes it exciting to visit because it’s like getting in on the ground floor. This way you can return 20 years later and sit with a glass of wine, pinky all the way extended, reminiscing about the “early days”.

The Casablanca Valley is known for its white grapes – chardonnay and sauvignon blanc, but also for pinot noir. It is just beginning to experiment with other red varietals like cabernet franc and malbec. There are tons of wineries here but we limited our visit to just Bodegas RE.

Bodegas RE

Bodegas RE was established in 2008, so is relatively new as far as wineries go, even for the Casablanca Valley. It is a smaller establishment with an adorable courtyard and tasting room/gift shop that reminded us of a winery you’d find somewhere in the Texas Hill Country.

However, what really intrigued me was the information I found on their website about how they ferment their grapes in amphora with a bent toward re-creating ancient wines from Biblical times.

Disappointingly for us, while the amphora fermentation was real (some of their wines are fermented in these, but not all), there was nary a mention of how the wines produced were ancient or similar to what Jesus would have drunk. If you are counting the fact that generally, it’s considered that Biblical wine wasn’t actually that good, then Bodegas RE does get a point for authenticity. Their wines were fine, just not that memorable.

We may have some sour grapes from this visit because we bought what we thought were in-house smoked pepper flakes only to find the same exact ones at the airport gift shop – and they were cheaper at the airport! Lol. (Tellingly though, we bought red pepper flakes, not bottles of wine.)

Valparaíso

One point for having a driver is that they tell you all sorts of interesting facts about the city like how the plano was filled in to make more flat space, and how the funiculars struggled during covid. You also get to experience interesting quirks like tipping parking spot “holders” and watching out for the human traffic signal – with none of the consternation of figuring it out on your own.

Alegre Hill: Dimalow Passage and Lunch at the Fauna Hotel

Leo drove us to a great little neighborhood in the hills where we had lunch at Fauna, a hotel and restaurant in Passage Dimalow, which is considered the heart of Cerro Alegre (the hill we were atop). Their restaurant is on the top floor and has outdoor seating with amazing views over the city.

Service was nice, and the food was fresh and delicious. We had ceviche and split a brie and green apple sandwich. Brian of course had a Chilean red beer.

Passage Dimalow is a pretty short little alley, too narrow for cars and perfect for an after lunch stroll. (Another benefit of a driver is the convenience of being dropped off at places where cars don’t fit.) At one end of the passage there are more nice views and an art installation. At the opposite end is a very cute looking ice cream shop called Heladería Amor Porteño. I was too full from lunch so we skipped ice cream and to this day, I regret it.

Artillery Hill: Paseo 21 de Mayo Viewpoint & The National Maritime Museum

Paseo 21 de Mayo is a viewpoint at the top of Cerro Artillería. Unfortunately the funicular that services this hill isn’t in service anymore so the only way to access the area is by driving or walking up.

Once at the top of the hill, you can walk out onto the Paseo 21 de Mayo. It is a gazebo with expansive views over the port. After checking out the view, stroll along a short path lined with souvenir shops and cute dogs.

Around the corner is the National Maritime Museum, a huge building that houses a collection of over three thousand Chilean naval artifacts.

Plaza Sotomayor

The Chilean Navy is headquartered in Valparaíso, and its building dominates one side of Plaza Sotomayor. This plaza is in the flat “plano” part of Valparaíso and has a monument honoring Chilean sailors who perished during the War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru/Bolivia.

Plaza Sotomayor is one of the main areas of the plano and is nice to drive around or stroll by. It is interesting to see but won’t take up a lot of time.

Viña del Mar

Viña del Mar is quite nice, if also quite vanilla. My fellow travel writers at Latitude Adjustment seemed to feel the same way, although they were more taken with Valparaíso than we were.

In Viña del Mar, I was impressed with the beautiful and very clean golden sand beaches, but less enamored with the numerous branded flags lining the walkways, fluttering around like Lays potato chips are a national treasure or something.

We didn’t experience much of the area away from the beaches but we did catch a few glimpses.

At the end of the day (trip)…

A few day trips from Santiago will let you experience parts of Chile that are quite a bit different from the city. I hope this post helps you make the most of your time there. If you’re planning to go, or you’ve already been and have ideas for other day trips, leave me a comment. I’d love to hear from you!