Iquique

Iquique needs 2 days: touring Cavancha beach and paragliding from the hills that drop straight down onto the city, on one, and visiting the former Humberstone Saltpeter Works, a UNESCO World Heritage ghost town in the middle of the desert, on the other. December-March brings the best beach weather, though the desert can be visited year-round. It's mid-priced. It's one of the best cities in the world for paragliding thanks to its constant thermal winds rising straight from the Atacama Desert to the coastline, and Humberstone, abandoned overnight in the 1960s when synthetic nitrate replaced the natural kind, preserves an entire workers' town intact.