SANTIAGO – Chile has been named in Lonely Planet’s just-published Best In Travel 2018 book as the No1 country to visit in 2018, followed by South Korea, Portugal and the obscure Djibouti.

The best cities for 2018 have been named as Seville in Spain, followed by Detroit, Canberra and Hamburg, while Belfast and the Causeway Coast are named as best region and the UK is the seventh best-value country.

The book of the world’s largest travel guide book publisher, also picks out the coastal city of Valparaiso as a big plus point for Chile, with its ‘art-filled streets, bohemian cafes and romance-inducing promenades’.

The country also boasts the wilds of Patagonia in the south and the Atacama desert in the north where ‘there’s been a big bang in astrotourism, with new stargazing hotels and geektastic tours to groundbreaking observatories’.