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Arequipa: Salinas & Aguada Blanca Reserve with Volcanos & Hot Springs

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Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/9

Duration10h–11h

GroupUp to 19

LanguagesEN · ES

PickupAt your hotel

Three Volcanos, Salt Mirrors & a Soak in the Andes

You start before dawn at a viewpoint overlooking three volcanos, eat breakfast in a mountain village, then spend the day in the Salinas and Aguada Blanca National Reserve watching vicuñas and flamingos among salt flats and water mirrors. A soak in natural hot springs rounds out the afternoon before your return to the city. Hotel pickup and a guide are included, so you don't arrange transport or worry about timing.

10h–11h

Step-by-step itinerary

Start tour at 6 am
Visit Mirador de los Volcanes viewpoint
See volcanoes Misti, Chachani, Pichu Pichu
Visit local square and church
Have breakfast
Observe flora and fauna
Explore Salinas and Aguada Blanca landscapes
See vicuñas, llamas, alpacas, guanacos
Visit salt flats and water bodies
Spot flamingos and water mirrors
Visit Lojen mini-volcano
Relax at natural hot springs

The Experience

You're standing at 3,000 meters before most of Arequipa wakes up. The tour starts at 6 am from your hotel, and the first stop is Chiguata's Mirador de los Volcanes — a viewpoint where you can see Misti, Chachani and Pichu Pichu all at once, their peaks lined up across the horizon like something you'd sketch and then doubt was real. The light is still soft, the air thin and cold, and you're already acclimatizing without thinking about it. There's breakfast after, in the square near the local church, which gives your body a chance to settle before the reserve itself.

The Salinas and Aguada Blanca National Reserve is the kind of place that changes depending on when you arrive. In wet season, you get water mirrors — shallow lakes that reflect the sky so perfectly you can't tell where the ground ends and the air begins. In dry season, the salt flat spreads out white and flat, and people take those surreal perspective photos where they're holding up a volcano between their fingers. Either way, the wildlife is there: vicuñas (wild relatives of llamas), actual llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and if you're lucky, flamingos picking through the salt water. Your guide knows the landscape and the animals, and will point out the yaretales and queñuales — the tough shrubs that survive up here when almost nothing else does.

After the reserve, there's a stop at Lojen, a small volcano that looks like someone left a cone-shaped pile of rock in the middle of nowhere, and then you head to the natural hot springs. This is the part that catches people off guard — you get 30 to 60 minutes to actually soak, which means you're not just passing through. The water is warm, the Andean landscape is still around you, and your muscles remember that you've been climbing all morning. By the time you're back in Arequipa, you've seen three volcanos, crossed a salt flat, watched for flamingos and soaked in geothermal water, all in one day.

What’s included

Your day includes hotel pickup at 6 am, a guided tour of the Mirador de los Volcanes viewpoint, breakfast in Chiguata, entry to the Salinas and Aguada Blanca National Reserve with time to see salt flats, water mirrors and wildlife, a stop at the Lojen mini-volcano, and 30 to 60 minutes soaking in natural hot springs. A first aid box travels with the group, and your guide handles the route and timing so you focus on the landscape.

Good to know

Easy physical levelPets welcomeInfants must sit on laps

Operated by La Nueva Ruta AllinCapac

Is this one for you?Book this if you want to see the three volcanos that frame Arequipa, cross a salt flat and soak in hot springs without arranging your own transport or worrying about altitude — the early start and breakfast stop are what make the full day possible at that elevation.