Museo Arqueológico San Miguel de Azapa

The Universidad de Tarapacá's archaeological museum, set among olive groves 12 km up the Azapa Valley, is the reason many visitors come to Arica. Its star exhibits are Chinchorro mummies: fisher-gatherers on this coast began mummifying their dead around 7,000 years ago, some two thousand years before the Egyptians, taking bodies apart, reinforcing them with sticks and reeds, and finishing them with clay masks. The rest of the collection covers 10,000 years of life in the Andes and the desert: Tiwanaku and Inca textiles, ceramics, tools and musical instruments, with labels in Spanish and English. Allow at least an hour. The Azapa colectivo from Chacabuco and Patricio Lynch drops you at the gate; a taxi can wait while you visit and stop at the Cerro Sagrado geoglyphs on the way back.