San Pedro de Atacama, Chile Travel Blogs

Getting Used to Clean Air
Jul 5, 2006 (17 photos)

... , some tagged with colorful yarns, woven into their fur, to brand them as someone's property. Our guide, interestingly enough, was a San Pedro native and indigenous. Well-spoken in Spanish, I was on a tour of gringos, and he insisted on speaking in ...

floating on salt...
Feb 17, 2008 (69 photos)

... , NY.    There's this initiative to tap the power of the geysers...gather up a bit of geothermal for San Pedro...makes sense to me.   But there's conflict between tourism people and energy activists/energy developers.....the most ...

Altiplano and The Valley of the Moon (San Pedro 2)
Jul 5, 2006 (19 photos)

... most interesting part of the caves was the entrance, a tiny canyon of soft sedimentary rock. Approximately six months earlier, heavy rains hit San Pedro, dumping the equivalent of a high-year's total rainfall (just an inch and a half) in a day. In such a ...

Chile and a slight change of plans!
Jul 6, 2008 (9 photos)

... days of well needed chilling out in Chile ...well it was well needed as me and zo were boh ilol out of both ends...Nice! San Pedro De Atacama is a very nice chilled out town.... i liked it a lot, i found it to be the sort of place you could get stuck ...

Friday in San Pedro
Jul 7, 2006 (10 photos)

... 7/7/2006 With Monday, and my flight back to Santiago, still three days away, I began to take notice of how much money I'd spent in San Pedro-on tours, on hotels, on food-and how much I still expected to spend (on gifts). Luckily, most of my friends had ...

The Gringo trail.
Jul 27, 2005 (18 photos)

... in some countries and areas, it's more like an eight lane freeway from here and heading north towards Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. San Pedro de Atacama is pretty expensive, as it more or less caters only for tourists, located as it is among some awesome ...

"Adventures in Sand boarding," with Emilio
Jul 9, 2006 (2 photos)

... in a hired car on Saturday at 9:45, 15 minutes late. He sat in the passenger seat, and his driver, a chubby, jovial San Pedro Indian handed me a book on the region's history, printed and compiled by CODELCO, Chile's national copper company, while Emilio ...

In the Atacama Desert
Apr 3, 2006 (11 photos)

... (about GBP45.00) each. You'll have to read the next entry to see how we get on! The town of San Pedro de Atacama, despite having lots of tourists is still very beautiful and peaceful. The central Plaza de Armas is surrounded by crumbling whitewashed ...

A quick whizz through Chile
Jan 31, 2006 (5 photos)

... right clothes. And so 25 hours after getting on a bus in Santiago, I arrived this morning in the northern village of San Pedro de Atacama, a little weary and with knees that are no longer speaking to me. San Pedro must be what Las Vegas was like 100 ...

Weird Landscapes, Part 2 - Chile in 48 Hours
May 27, 2005 (3 photos)

... -paved road with paved shoulders, guardrails and even lines! We were in awe. After about an hour we rolled into San Pedro de Atacama, a cute little town in the middle of a desert. We went through Chilean immigration and customs (much more thorough than any ...

Driving, Hiking, and Climbing in the Desert-PART I
Aug 30, 2007 (33 photos)

... we were still in the same country. The plane landed in Calama, which is about 90 minutes from where I was staying in San Pedro de Atacama. The drive there was stunning. It was my first taste of how varied the desert landscape can be, not just brown ...

My Bolivia
Jul 6, 2008

I´ve been struggling with what to write about "My Bolivia"... To me, it was more a place to have a laugh than anything else... What strikes me the most is probably the great amount of nothingness... but beautiful nothingness... No-one does nothingness ...

The Atacama Desert
Apr 24, 2006 (7 photos)

... the journey. They even give you meals and show movies. It was great!! Better than a plane, and much cheaper too. San Pedro De Atacama is a little village quite literally in the middle of nowhere. Its in the Atacama desert, the driest place on the ...

Ghost Trains, Flamingos & Salt Flats
Feb 18, 2009 (71 photos)

... similar to the Bolivian ones. I just had to have a taste and guess what.....it tasted of salt. Before we got to San Pedro de Atacama, we stopped off at the 'Natural Reserve Los Flamencos' in the 'Laguna Chaxa' sector. This was created to protect the ...

A day in San Pedro and the amazing luna landscape
Aug 30, 2006 (8 photos)

... so after we had sent another parcel home and looked at the handicraft market, etc we then booked an afternoon trip to the Valle de la Luna (valley of the moon). Booking this trip was almost an afterthought but am really glad we did. We left at about ...

sandboarding....not....
Feb 16, 2008 (20 photos)

... ....the driest desert in the world according to Lonely Planet....and I believe it.  We move inland on an overnight bus to San Pedro de Atacama.  They only drive this stretch at night I think because it is SO hot during the day...and at night it ...

High and dry
Nov 28, 2005 (9 photos)

... , I didn't miss this time), I arrived in the fairly unexciting town of Calama, and spent a night there before coming to San Pedro de Atacama on Wednesday. As there wasn't much to do in Calama, I ended up going to the cinema, which was such a treat - the ...

Fly me to the moon.....
Nov 19, 2005 (2 photos)

a 20hr bus journey took us north to San Pedro de Atacama, which is a little villige of narrow dirt streets and adobe houses. It is at an altitude of 2,400m and sits between the desert and the altiplano. I instantly loved the place, it smelt like a ...

Driving, Hiking, and Climbing in the Desert-PART 2
Aug 31, 2007 (37 photos)

... to talk about, including my side trip to the Green and White Lagoons in Bolivia and my slightly less fearless night walk to the town of San Pedro the following evening. I am heading to my next top secret destination. Here´s an easy hint: Evita Peron.

El Tatio Geysers, San Pedro de Atacama
Sep 20, 2006 (22 photos)

... back to work at my old hospital. Got up very early this morning to join a tour to the El Tatio Geysers, about 70 km from San Pedro. We reached El tatio before sunrise, as they are at their best between 6aqm and 7am. It was a chilly -12 degrees C, probably ...

Salta to San Pedro de Atacama
Sep 17, 2006 (12 photos)

The trip was spectacular, but I got acute altitude sickness at the border between Argentina and Chile and required supplemental oxygen. Most of the photos dont do the scenery justice as they were taken from the bus.

Gateway to Bolivia
Apr 11, 2008

Gateway to Bolivia

Back to the desert
Mar 30, 2008 (164 photos)

San Pedro de Atacama

Sand boarding in San Pedro de Atacama
Jul 7, 2008 (11 photos)

So, after arriving in San Pedro de Atacama (SPDA), Tom and I were both sick... I´m not going to go into details, but we didn´t eat for a whole day and were feeling a bit sorry for ourselves... Flippin chicken on that flippin salt flats tour!! ...

A dry day in the desert
Feb 19, 2009 (19 photos)

... Empanada's. They were grand - as usual. We spent the rest of the late afternoon and evening chilling in the streets of San Pedro, and sending postcards home, before heading out for dinner. We went to the Export Restaurant this evening. Lorna had Lomo ...

Chile!
Oct 20, 2006 (8 photos)

First impression of Chile was meanly: very western and very expensive! San Pedro is very relaxed though and I would have stayed a few days if the financial shock, comming from Bolivia wouldn´t have been so big.

Probably the best bus journey in the world.......
Aug 29, 2006 (4 photos)

Up at 6am and walked to the bus station to get our 7am bus to San Pedro in Chile. Spent the first few hours sleeping on the surprisingly comfortable bus. Fortunately we woke up before the amazing scenery. As we entered the countryside the scenery ...

San Pedro de Atacama - Visiting the Desert
Mar 26, 2004 (5 photos)

Once cheerfully deposited in San Pedro de Atacama, we agonized over directions to our chosen hotel for a few minutes as there was no map in the guide book. Giving up, we jumped in a taxi and were driven a few hundred metres away, along dusty roads to ...

Into the desert
Mar 27, 2004 (7 photos)

... I flew for 2.5 hours to Calama. From there it was a quick negotiation with the minibus driver for transport to San Pedro de Atacama, an hour's drive away. This was my first lesson in being truly spontaneous, as I had nothing booked for transport or ...

Exploring the Atacama Outback
Nov 30, 2004 (20 photos)

... capacity and three metre high tyres! After an overnight stop in Calama, we pressed on for the small oasis town of San Pedro de Atacama, that offers very welcome green and leafy shade after the intense browns, purples and relentless sun of the desert. ...