Arica to Central

The Arica–La Paz railway was built as a treaty obligation. Under the Treaty of Peace and Friendship that Chile and Bolivia signed in 1904, Chile undertook to build a railway from its port of Arica to the Bolivian capital, and it opened on 13 May 1913: 440 kilometres of metre gauge, climbing from the Pacific to a summit of 4,257 metres at General Lagos before crossing into Bolivia. It was the shortest route between the ocean and the altiplano, and for most of the twentieth century it carried passengers as well as ore.

It does not carry them now, except on a few days a year. The last regular passenger trains ran in 1996, and today EFE, Chile's state railway, sells only excursions out of Arica: half-day trips up the Lluta valley to the village of Poconchile, and a smaller number of full-day and evening trains that climb on to Central, an empty railway settlement 70 kilometres inland and 1,400 metres up. Those are the journeys this page describes. They are short, guided and infrequent, and they are the only way to ride any part of this line.

Every excursion starts at Estación Chinchorro, in the old railway workshops on Calle Brasil in Arica, which EFE restored in 2024 and opens early so passengers can see the small museum and the archaeology found on the site before the train leaves. The coast here is Chinchorro country — the people who, from around 5450 BCE, made the oldest known deliberate mummies in the world — and the guides begin with them.

The train is a General Electric diesel in EFE's blue and orange with two coaches built by Schindler in Switzerland in the mid-1950s for Chile's state railway. It leaves the city across the coastal plain, beside the highway and its lorries bound for Tacna and La Paz, and turns inland up the valley of the Lluta.

The Lluta valley

For most of the way to Poconchile the railway runs along the valley floor, and the valley is the whole show: a flat ribbon of irrigated fields, mostly maize, between hills of bare sand and rock where nothing grows at all. The line passes the Colcas de Huaylacán, storehouses of the Arica culture later used by the Inca, and on the valley's south wall there are panels of geoglyphs — figures laid out on the hillside — which the guides point out from the train. Depending on the day, the train stops either at the colcas or at Rosario, an old stone station where valley producers set out stalls.

Poconchile, at kilometre 36, is where the half-day trains turn round. The village has a guided walk to its adobe church of San Jerónimo, a national monument, and time for lunch.

The climb to Central

The Central trains go on. Beyond the valley floor the line climbs on a grade of about three per cent, out of the green and into open desert, with the Lluta laid out below, to reach 1,400 metres. Central itself, at kilometre 70, was opened with the railway in 1913 and once housed more than six hundred people; today it houses nobody. It stood at the foot of the rack section, where until 1968 trains climbed on a cog rail to Puquios and the altiplano. The guide walks passengers round the station master's house, the school and the amphitheatre before the train heads back down, stopping at Poconchile for lunch.

Beyond Central

The track carries on up the rack section and over the altiplano to Visviri on the Bolivian border, and it is in working order: freight trains to Bolivia resumed in May 2021. In December 2025 EFE ran a pilot passenger train over the high section between Alcérreca and Visviri, the first passenger train to reach Visviri in twenty-eight years, to test a future tourist service. Nothing is on sale yet.

There is no regular timetable. EFE runs excursions from Arica on dated days, and the four below are the only departures on sale for the rest of 2026. All leave from Estación Chinchorro, Calle Brasil 117; EFE asks passengers to arrive 45 minutes before departure.

The dates, trips and times are from EFE Arica's own ticket portal, read in September 2026, and the intermediate times from the operator's itinerary for each trip.

Arica to Central, 5 December

Poconchile, 28 November

The festival day runs an hour later than the usual Poconchile trip: out at 11:00, at Rosario for the Fiesta Costumbrista at 12:15, into Poconchile at 13:20, leaving again at 15:40 with a stop at Rosario at 16:00, and back in Arica at 17:20. On an ordinary Poconchile day the train leaves at 10:00, stops at Rosario or the Colcas de Huaylacán at 11:15, reaches Poconchile at 12:20 and is back in Arica at 16:20.

Tren de las Estrellas

Out at 18:30, at Central at 21:20 for an astronomy session with telescopes, away again at 23:00 and back in Arica at 02:00.

A fourth trip, to the Hacienda Eco-Truly ecological community in the valley, is listed by EFE with its dates still to be confirmed.

Departures are published by the operator: EFE · Servicios turísticos (opens in a new tab).

Tickets are sold online by EFE Arica, one date at a time, with numbered seats, and places are limited: the November Tren de las Estrellas was already showing no availability in September. Each trip has three fares — adult, and a lower one shared by children and seniors — and the price covers the train, the guide, and a snack, a cereal bar and a bottle of water handed out on board.

Lunch at Poconchile and anything bought at Central's café is extra, and EFE advises carrying cash, since card payment depends on a mobile signal in the desert. There is one class.

No rail pass covers this journey. Chile sits outside the Interrail and Eurail schemes, and EFE sells each Arica excursion as a single ticket that includes the guide and the return trip, so there is nothing a pass could discount.

The line is also cut off from the rest of EFE's network. Arica is the only place in the north of Chile where EFE runs passenger trains of any kind; every other service it sells is in the centre and south of the country.

Four places carry the journey: the city it starts from, the valley it follows, the village where the short trips turn and the empty settlement where the long ones do. Only the first has hotels, restaurants or anything like a timetable of its own; the other three are visited with the train and left with it.

Every excursion starts and ends in Arica, so a bed in the city covers any of them — including the Tren de las Estrellas, which gets back at two in the morning. Estación Chinchorro is north of the city centre, a short taxi ride from either hotel below.

There is nowhere to stay at Poconchile or Central as part of the trip; both are visited for a few hours and left on the same train.