Atacama Desert Travel Guide

The Atacama Desert covers the north of Chile and holds a distinction that is hard to picture until you are standing in it, which is that some weather stations here have never recorded rain. That absence shapes everything. The skies are so consistently clear that the world's major observatories are built here, the salt crusts and lava fields survive uneroded, and the landscape reads as closer to Mars than to anywhere else in the country (maybe even the world).

Almost all of it is visited from San Pedro de Atacama, a small adobe town about an hour and fifteen minutes by road from Calama, which is the nearest airport. From that one main street you can reach the El Tatio geyser field before dawn, watch flamingos feeding on the Salar de Atacama, and climb to altiplano lagoons above 14,000 feet. It is also the starting point for the crossing into Bolivia and the Uyuni salt flats, if you are heading that way.

The altitude is the thing most people underestimate. San Pedro sits at around 2,400 meters and the excursions climb well beyond it, so we would strongly recommend spending your first day slowly. It makes everything that follows more enjoyable.

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