For a long time pictures of the Atacama desert intrigued me, vast salt flats of swirling color, alien landscapes without a single plant visible. It was part of the reason I picked Chile as one of the destinations for this trip. But after enjoying the Utah desert, I think I had built it up in my head too much, it wasn’t disappointing, but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.
We rented a car and found a nice cabana in San Pedro de Atacama. The cabana was really nice, just on the outskirts of the city, perfect to avoid the tourist trap center, but close enough to be convenient. We did 3 day trips from here, each day heading East, South and North respectfully.
On arrival we tried to do Valle de Luna but it was closed to non guided tours in the afternoon, so we just relaxed the rest of the afternoon.
On day 1 we then did Valle de Luna, it took us about 1.5 hours to see all the overlooks and do each of the hikes. It was a unique landscape, red rocks and sand, with no vegetation. It was nice to see but I wouldn’t want to spend much more time there.
The rest of our time followed a repeating pattern. About a 1.5 hour drive in our chosen direction, slowly climbing out of the valley, past mostly open desert with nearly no houses except a small village or two along the way. While the sites were many, they mostly consisted of mountain vistas and salt lakes. The wildlife was a highlight, we saw tons of vicuna and lots of birds along the way. Ocaisionally we caught sight of the Nandu, an ostrich like slightly smaller flightless bird. And in most of the salt lakes were flamingoes, it was very cool to see them feeding on brine shrimp. In my head I always thought flamingoes were hot weather birds, but we have now seen them all over Chile so I guess they are adaptable.
We had climbed a long way to each of the sites, while San Pedro de Atacama is at 8K ft, most of the sites where up above 14K, one part of the road even hit above 16K. Charissa had a bit of a headache at times from the altitude, while I felt dizzy and out of breath anytime I did anything more than sitting or driving. The nice part of the height was that we were above the clouds and the weather was fantastic. The whole time we were up their we had blue skies and no wind.
One of the things that detracted from the trip were the opening hours of various sights. Valle de Luna for example was only open to self driving cars from 9 to 3, though we got there at 4 and dozens of guides with full vans were able to go in, but we were turned away. Also I learned that prices with the guides were much cheaper for some sights. So I understand that the community is dependant on tourism, but it did seem more focus was on making money and not much on catering to visitors.
Despite the downsides, I still would very much recommend a visit to Atacama and doing it via self drive, with a 4×4 if you can swing it. There are so many sights to see in this unique habitat that I could have easily spent a few more days there. Come check it out yourself.
