If you’re staying in Santiago, Valparaíso is the obvious outing, and the first question is whether to go for the day or stay the night. We did a one-night stay in November 2025, going out by private transfer and coming back the same way the next day. It cost £50 return per person. Here’s how it went, and when I’d change the plan.
Getting there from Santiago
Our transfer arrived in Valparaíso at 11.45am. It should normally take just over an hour, but traffic around Santiago stretched it to about 1 hour 45 minutes, so allow for that if you’ve got a lunch booked! We went with a private transfer rather than a bus, and the return the next day was with the same service.
What there is to do in a single night
Valparaíso is quaint and very photogenic, covered with hundreds of brightly painted murals, and we took far more photos than we’d planned. It’s rougher around the edges than Buenos Aires or Santiago (big European-style cities) and not as polished as Bariloche or Puerto Varas, but we both liked it. It reminded us of our holiday in Cuba in the 1990s.
The city seems to have no flat areas at all. That evening we wandered around aimlessly, going downhill constantly through the two safest neighbourhoods, Alegre and Concepción, until we found a funicular to carry us back up. The tickets were 300 pesos each (about 25p) and they only took coins. Luckily I had enough in my pocket!
Lunch was in a cafe with a young guitarist singing sad Chilean songs, where I got almost-cooked scrambled eggs. In the evening I picked a restaurant that had a single bottle of lager but tons of craft beer, and I enjoyed the atmosphere more than my barely passable pizza.
Was one night enough?
For us, yes. Valparaíso was a very nice place, but we were staying in the safer part of town, and that kept us to a handful of streets. Because we had to be back in Santiago the next day, it didn’t matter that we only had 1 night.
If we hadn’t been going back to Santiago, I think we’d have stayed longer and used Valparaíso as a base to explore the Pacific coast. So my rule of thumb is this: if it’s a side trip from Santiago, one night works well, and if Valparaíso is a stop on a longer route, give it more nights.
A day trip would also work, but with a transfer that took 1 hour 45 minutes on our way out, you could spend a good chunk of the day in a car. Staying the night meant we got the evening light and the funicular home instead (and a lot more photos than a day trip would have given us)!