Four days in San Pedro de Atacama: the driest desert on earth, and it is full of water

Three nights in a twelve block adobe town at 2,400 metres, with the moon valley at dusk, the salt lagoons, the El Tatio geysers before dawn and a warm river in a canyon.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
San Pedro de Atacama
Places
8 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

There are weather stations in the Atacama that have never recorded rain. Nothing grows between the town and the mountains, the ground is salt and gravel, and the air is so dry that the world's biggest telescopes are built up here rather than anywhere else.

What nobody tells you is how much water there is once you look. Warm rivers come out of canyon walls, geysers throw steam eighty at a time at four in the morning, and a lagoon on the salt flat is so dense with brine that you cannot sink in it. San Pedro is the small adobe town everyone uses as a base, twelve blocks of it, at 2,400 metres, and it exists almost entirely to send people out to those things.

Three nights is the sensible stay. Each excursion has a time of day that it only works at, which means they cannot be stacked, and the altitude means the first day should be a light one.

Highlights

  • Valle de la Luna at sunset, when the salt ridges go orange and then violet
  • El Tatio at dawn, over eighty geysers steaming at 4,300 metres with frost on the ground
  • Floating without effort in a lagoon on the Atacama salt flat, which is as salty as the Dead Sea
  • The Puritama, a warm river running through a canyon in the middle of absolute desert
  • A sky with no light, no cloud and no moisture in it, which is why the telescopes are here

Where to stay

San Pedro de Atacama

A few thousand people live in San Pedro, in single-storey adobe on a grid of dirt streets, under a volcano called Licancabur that stands almost perfectly conical at the eastern end of every road. The town was an oasis and a caravan stop for a very long time before it was a tourist one, and the archaeological museum exists because a Jesuit priest spent decades digging up the basin around it.

Three nights lets each excursion happen at the hour it is worth doing: the moon valley in the last two hours of light, the lagoons in the mid afternoon, the geysers before dawn. The two short archaeological sites are the ones to do yourself, on a bicycle, on whichever morning suits.

Day by day

Day 1 in San Pedro de Atacama

Into the desert, and Valle de la Luna at sunset

Flights from Santiago land at Calama in the morning and the transfer takes an hour and a half across nothing at all, which is a good introduction. Drop your bags, walk Caracoles, drink water.

The museum in town is the right first stop, both because it is fifty metres from everything and because it explains what you are about to drive through: twelve thousand years of people living in a basin with no rain, and the objects they left.

Then Valle de la Luna, which every agency runs as an afternoon trip ending at sunset and which nobody should do at any other time. It is a salt range folded and eroded into ridges, craters and caves, and the last hour of light turns it through orange into a deep violet that photographs badly and is worth seeing anyway. There is a knocking sound in the salt as the temperature drops. It is harmless.

Do not book a stargazing tour for tonight. Sleep instead.

  1. 15:00

    R.P. Gustavo Le Paige archaeological museum

    Visit

    The town's archaeology museum, built on the collection of Gustavo Le Paige, a Belgian priest who excavated the basin from the 1950s. Textiles, tools, snuff trays and metalwork from the oasis cultures, well explained, and thirty minutes well spent before any tour.

  2. 16:30

    Valle de la Luna

    Nature

    Part of the Cordillera de la Sal, weathered into crests, craters and salt caves with no plant or animal in any of it. Almost every tour ends at a viewpoint for sunset. Take a jacket for the moment the sun goes, because the temperature falls off a cliff.

With more time: If you arrive early enough to have a spare hour, walk to the top of Caracoles and out to the church, a whitewashed adobe building with a cactus-wood roof that is one of the oldest in northern Chile. The agencies are all on the same street, so book the next two days now: Valle de la Luna is often sold as an afternoon plus a morning archaeological tour.

Day 2 in San Pedro de Atacama

A fortress by bicycle, then floating on the salt flat

The two archaeological sites near the town are the ones you can reach on your own, and a bicycle is the way to do it. Pukara de Quitor is four kilometres up the valley, a fortified hillside of stone walls built around the tenth century, which the Atacameno held until the Spanish came up the same valley in 1540 and took it. Climb to the top for the view down the oasis.

Tulor is further out across the sand, and it is stranger: the round mud walls of a village about three thousand years old, mostly still buried, with a couple of chambers dug out so you can see how they were built. It is the oldest settlement found in the basin.

Get back to town for lunch and a rest, because the lagoon trips leave in the middle of the afternoon.

The Atacama salt flat is a crust of grey rubble the size of a small country, and there are lagoons in it where the water carries so much salt that a person floats on top without any effort. Which lagoon is open to swimmers changes with conservation rules, so the operator will tell you where you are getting in. Rinse afterwards, since the salt dries as a white crust on skin. The trips end with sunset and a pisco sour over the flat.

  1. 09:00

    Pukará de Quitor

    Historic

    A defensive settlement of stone terraces climbing a hillside four kilometres from town, most likely built in the tenth century and stormed by the Spanish in 1540. A steep path leads to the summit and the view back down the green strip of the oasis is the point.

  2. 11:00

    Aldea de Tulor

    Historic

    Circular adobe houses joined into a honeycomb, built around three thousand years ago and preserved by the sand that buried them. Only a small part is excavated. There is a reconstruction and a small display on the desert's plants and animals.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch and a rest in town

    Eat

    Back on Caracoles by one. Eat properly and drink a litre of water before the afternoon trip, because the salt flat is hot, exposed and higher than it looks.

  4. 15:30

    Laguna Cejar

    Visit

    A brine lagoon at the northern tip of the Atacama salt flat with the volcanoes lined up behind it. The water is dense enough to hold you up without swimming. Bring a towel and something to rinse with, and expect the tour to run until after sunset.

With more time: The same afternoon trip usually takes in the Ojos del Salar, two almost perfectly round freshwater sinkholes in the middle of the crust, and Laguna Tebinquiche for the sunset. If you would rather not cycle in the morning, every agency sells the two archaeological sites plus the museum as a half-day tour.

Day 3 in San Pedro de Atacama

El Tatio before dawn, and a warm river afterwards

The alarm goes at half past three. Minibuses leave town at four, climb for two hours in the dark, and arrive at El Tatio at first light because the geysers are at their most dramatic in the cold: the colder the air, the higher the steam. In winter the ground is frozen and the temperature at the field is regularly below minus five.

There are over eighty active geysers up here, at around 4,300 metres, on the third largest geyser field in the world. They are not tall. What makes it worth the alarm clock is the scale of the basin, the low sun coming through eighty columns of steam at once, and the fact that you are standing higher than anywhere else you are likely to stand on this trip. Keep to the marked paths; the crust is thin and people have been badly burned.

Most tours stop at the thermal pool at the field and then at Machuca, a village of thirty people, a church and a woman selling llama skewers, on the way down.

The afternoon is for doing very little. If you have anything left, the Puritama is the best possible use of it: a warm river, about thirty three degrees, running through a narrow canyon in country that has no other water in it at all. It is privately run, it costs real money, and it is worth it.

  1. 04:00

    El Tatio

    Nature

    Over eighty geysers in a basin at around 4,300 metres, visited between dawn and mid morning because the steam collapses once the air warms. Frost, thin air and a two hour drive each way. Take gloves, a hat and a proper coat, and eat the breakfast they hand out.

  2. 15:00

    Puritama

    Nature

    A warm river rather than a spring, around thirty three degrees, running down a canyon in a chain of pools with boardwalks between them. Entry is limited and booked in advance, and it is the most expensive hour in the Atacama. Go late in the day when the tour groups have gone.

With more time: If the geysers have finished you off, skip the river and lie in a courtyard instead. Tonight is the night for a stargazing tour, assuming the moon is not full: they leave around ten, run a couple of hours, and the guides know what they are talking about.

Day 4 in San Pedro de Atacama

The dune, and the road back to Calama

Valle de Marte is the closest of the strange landscapes, near enough to walk to and easy on a bicycle, and it holds a hundred metre dune that half the town sandboards down in the afternoon. In the morning it is quiet and the ridge above it looks back over the whole oasis with Licancabur behind.

Then back to town for the last coffee on Caracoles and the road to Calama. Buses run through the day, transfers meet the afternoon flights, and it is two hours to the airport including the check-in queue.

If you are going on to Bolivia instead, the Uyuni crossings leave San Pedro early in the morning, and that is a different kind of day.

  1. 08:30

    Valle de Marte

    Visit

    A valley of red rock and sand a couple of kilometres from town, with a dune close to a hundred metres high at one end. Walk or cycle out early, climb the ridge for the view, and leave the sandboarding to the afternoon crowd.

  2. 12:30

    Last lunch on Caracoles

    Eat

    Anywhere with a courtyard and a fire pit. Try the llama if you have not, or a quinoa salad, and buy water for the bus.

With more time: With an extra night, the Lagunas Altiplanicas trip is the one to add: a full day at over 4,000 metres taking in Miscanti and Miniques, two lakes under volcanoes, the flamingo colonies on the salt flat, and the stone village of Toconao. Salar de Tara, further out towards the Bolivian border, is the same idea for people who want to see almost nobody.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Fly to Calama, about 100 km northwest, from Santiago in roughly two hours. Buses to San Pedro take an hour and a half to two hours from Calama's terminal, and transfer minibuses meet the flights. Long-distance buses also run from Salta and Jujuy in Argentina over the Paso de Jama, and from Uyuni in Bolivia.

In town you walk. San Pedro is twelve small blocks with one pedestrian main street, Caracoles, and everything you need is on it. Bicycles rent by the half or full day and are the cheap way to reach Pukara de Quitor, Tulor and the edge of Valle de la Luna without an agency.

Everything further out is done as a tour, and there is no shame in it: the roads are unsigned, the distances are long, and a shared minibus with a guide costs less than the fuel would. Agencies line Caracoles and prices are similar. Ask what altitude you will reach and whether breakfast is included, because on the geyser trip both matter.

Altitude, cold and sun

San Pedro at 2,400 metres is mild and most people feel nothing more than a shortness of breath on the first day. El Tatio, at around 4,300 metres, is a different proposition, and going there on your first morning is how people end up vomiting in a minibus. Give yourself two nights in town before that trip, drink far more water than feels necessary, and skip alcohol on the first evening.

The temperature swing is extreme. A summer afternoon is well over thirty degrees and the same night can be near freezing, and at the geysers before sunrise it is regularly below minus five. Take a proper jacket, hat and gloves for that morning, however unlikely they look packed next to the swimming things.

The ultraviolet here is among the highest measured anywhere. Hat, long sleeves and high factor sunscreen are not optional, and reapply after any lagoon.

Money, water and the town

San Pedro is expensive by Chilean standards because everything is trucked in and it is one of the country's three big destinations. Cash matters: several agencies, some restaurants and all the park entry fees prefer it, and the two cash machines in town run out at the weekend. Bring pesos from Calama.

Do not drink the tap water. The groundwater here carries naturally high arsenic and locals do not drink it either; bottled or filtered water is universal and cheap.

The other local hazard is dogs. San Pedro has a very large stray population, mostly good natured, and a few of them chase bicycles. They are the reason the town's nickname is a pun on the Spanish word for dog.

Stargazing

This is one of the best places on earth to look up: no cloud, no humidity, no light. Small operators run nightly tours with telescopes and a guide, usually leaving town around ten and lasting a couple of hours, and they are cancelled around the full moon because it washes everything out. Check the lunar calendar before you fix your dates.

ALMA, the array of sixty six radio dishes on the Chajnantor plateau at 5,000 metres, runs free public visits at the weekend to its base facility lower down the mountain. Places open months ahead and go quickly, and you do not get to the array itself, which is at an altitude visitors are not taken to.

Eating

Caracoles is a row of adobe restaurants with courtyards, fire pits and menus in three languages, and they are pleasant and not cheap. The better value is a block or two off it, where the set lunch is a third of the price.

Local specialities are thin on the ground in a town this small and this touristy. What is genuinely regional is the quinoa, the llama meat that appears on most menus, and rica rica, a desert herb that turns up in the pisco sour.

The Atacama is the one place in Chile that people describe in the same words they use for other planets, and for once the comparison is earned: there are stretches out here with no plant, no insect and no soil, tested by NASA precisely because nothing lives in them.

From San Pedro the road runs north to Calama and its flights, east over the pass to Salta in Argentina, and northeast into Bolivia for the salt flat at Uyuni. All three are good onward trips and none of them is short.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is San Pedro worth it if I am also doing the Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia?
Partly. The three-day Uyuni crossing covers lagoons, geysers and thermal pools of its own, and several of them are better than the San Pedro versions. If Uyuni is on your route, come here for two nights rather than three, do Valle de la Luna and the archaeology, and save the geyser trip for Bolivia.
Do I have to book tours in advance?
In January, February and July, yes, at least a day or two ahead. The rest of the year you can walk down Caracoles the evening before and book everything in half an hour. Prices are near identical between agencies, so choose on group size and whether the guide speaks a language you have.
How bad is the altitude?
The town itself is unlikely to trouble you beyond a headache and broken sleep on the first night. El Tatio is the problem, and the fix is simple: put it on your third morning rather than your first, drink constantly, and tell the guide immediately if you feel ill rather than trying to get through it.
When should I come?
Any month works, because it does not rain. Nights are coldest from June to August and that is also when the geysers are at their most spectacular. December to February is the Chilean holiday and the town is full. The one thing worth timing is the moon, if you care about the stars.
Can I change this plan?
Yes. Copy it and move the days around, drop the geysers if a four o'clock start is not your idea of a holiday, add a night for the high lagoons.