Once a successful salt mine town, Iquique is currently an important northern coastal city in Chile. The combination of urban and beach city makes it a popular vacation destination among Chileans, and more and more internationally. The city's old town on the pedestrian street Baquedano and the Arturo Platt Plaza and the beaches are great places to visit. Iquique's Cavancha beach has accessibility features like an amphibious wheelchair, as well as trained lifeguards.

Iquique

In the heart of Iquique, on Cavancha Beach, sits the colorful building that houses the Gran Cavancha Hotel & Apartments. The hotel’s 21 floors offer stunning views of the desert city of Iquique and the Pacific ocean. Guests can enjoy the rooftop pool, with an elevator and fixed ramp to access the upper floor and support bars to access the pool. Hotel staff are prepared to push and transport wheelchairs and baggage. 

Gran Cavancha Hotel & Apartments offers a variety of room types, from studios to three bedroom apartments. The accessible one bedroom apartment offers a sofa and a queen bed, an equipped kitchenette and dining table, and views of the beachside city. The accessible bathroom is outfitted with grab bars for support and a folding shower seat in the shower. 

Guests can dine in the hotel’s onsite restaurant or bar. Breakfast is served every morning in the restaurant and guests can dine on the outdoor terrace that overlooks the ocean. The hotel’s bar offers drinks and an international menu. The hotel is located 0.4 miles (0.7 km) from Iquique’s Baquedano walkway, which offers a variety of bars and restaurants. 

Cavancha Beach is the city’s main swimming beach, with lifeguards on duty during the summer, a long winding boardwalk, parks, and a casino. The hotel is located 0.1 miles (0.2 km) from Barrio Ingles, the city’s historic neighborhood that is home to the naval museum and boasts architecture that tells the tales of this city’s history as a port and mining city.

Gran Cavancha Hotel & Apartments

A colorful high-rise building in the heart of Iquique, Gran Cavancha Hotel & Apartments offers ocean views close to downtown.

A guest room with a bed and a wall of windows that look out onto the city and ocean.

Guides / staff members have experience assisting people with disabilities

Transportation is not wheelchair accessible but assistance will be provided for transfers

No accessible bathrooms available for the activity

Few accessibility measures are in place and assistance is needed for the full experience

Enjoy astonishing views as you surf the sand dunes of Iquique, Chile. A mini-van will pick guests up from their hotel and take them directly to the top of the Cerro de Dragón in central Iquique, where the activity takes place. The van is not wheelchair accessible, but experienced staff will provide assistance will be for manual transfers. The van also has safe wheelchair storage and a step entrance. Chile’s dry climate and the Cerro’s fine sand make it the ideal place for this tour. Trained professionals will help you get used to the sensation of sandboarding as you practice on smaller dunes, using a board or a sled, depending on their preferences. 
You will have the opportunity to learn several techniques and practices that will turn you into a sandboarding professional! Once they feel ready, Guests can surf down the 350-meter urban Cerro Dragón and enjoy this adrenaline-filled activity.

Surfing the dunes of Iquique: Adaptive Sandboarding

Surf the 350-meter sand dunes of Iquique, Chile, on a sand-board or a sled to get your adrenaline fix!

Places present some barriers and minimum assistance is needed

Enjoy the thrills of an accessible tandem paraglide flight over Iquique, with panoramic views stretching across the town, the mountains and the sea. 

This experience will begin with a pick-up service at your hotel and a transfer in a vehicle to the take-off site at Alto Hospicio, located 500 meters above sea level. Your flight instructors will assist you to put on the flight gear and explain safety proceedings to you. The paragliding company has over two decades’ worth of experience in paragliding and have worked with many visitors with physical and visual disabilities, so they will be ready to help you wherever necessary. 

You will then wait at the take-off site, a sandy field, until the conditions are ideal for you to ascend. Your instructor will guide you for the entire flight and take care of all of the technical aspects of the paraglide, leaving you free to relax and take in the incredible views. You will be in the air for at least 20 minutes, giving you plenty of time to swoop over Iquique, the coastline, the mountains and the sand dunes. 

Once you have soared over the bay, you will gently come into land on a field outside of Iquique.

Iquique from the sky - tandem paragliding experience

A tandem paraglide flight over the mountains and the sea that is adapted for people with disabilities.

A tandem paraglide flight over Iquique and the coastline.