Atacama Desert
A trip to the moon—on Earth. The Atacama is the driest and highest desert on our planet with elevations from 5,000 – 13,000 feet above sea level. It’s a lunar landscape of dusky craters, salt-encrusted salares (flats), and looming volcanoes. Its isolation, rare beauty, light, and energy are precisely why the Atacama attracts visitors from around the world.
The town of San Pedro, an oasis in the midst of a parched desert is the jumping off point for exploration and has a whitewashed adobe church dating back to colonial times, a colorful handicrafts market, and dusty streets lined with busy outdoor cafes. Further out climbing into the Altiplano, these little desert villages feel seemingly lost in time, surrounded only by grandiose nature and the rhythm of the cosmos.
Ingredients
To fully experience the Atacama, you have to get outside–on foot, horseback, bike, or even a sand board. Head for “Valle de la Muerte”, Death Valley, a steep canyon of boulders and enormous sand dunes. The terrain does, indeed, resemble Mars. The soft, cushy dunes are perfect for sandboarding, galloping on horseback, or barreling down them by foot. Or take a morning hike through Guatín Valley and its canyons filled with huge cacti. Here, the Purifica and Puritama rivers meet in a deep gully and gush down over smooth rocks. Hike and hop from side to side of the rushing river and marvel at the magnificent thorny plants and rock formations.
Things We Love
An Artists’ Retreat: Just outside the town of San Pedro, there’s an artist-in-residence project where artists from the region and further afar come to paint, draw, and write and be inspired by the desert-scapes. The small bookshop on hand offers many beautiful photographic books on the Atacama and a shady tree to find a spot to read.
Up in the Altiplano: Sky high up in the altiplano, the air becomes thinner and the colors more vibrant. A favorite day excursion from San Pedro is the Salar de Tara, near the border of Argentina and Bolivia. An eerily beautiful evaporated salt lake is punctuated with huge rock formations that form Dali-ques statues in the middle of a stark desert. Perhaps it’s the lack of oxygen, but the colors are bewitching: hues of orange, red, pink, and yellow contrast with the intense azure of the sky. Mesmerizing.
The Daily Show: Waking up well before dawn is an act of faith as you brave the freezing cold to head out to welcome the sunrise. After a bumpy road high into the altiplano, you encounter the largest geyser field in the Southern Hemisphere. As the first morning appears behind the mountains, huge streams of vapor erupt into the freezing air, producing a ghostly atmosphere. There’s also a more tepid thermal pool to take a dip, if you can braze the subzero morning air. Of course, a selfie in the geyser’s mist is obligatory.
and the meaningful
Hotels
Awasi Atacama
Built in the town of San Pedro, Awasi is an oasis constructed around ample spaces and outdoor living areas. The cottages made of stone, adobe, and wood feel like your own kingdom with terraces for sunbathing or napping under a cloudless sky. Secluded and private, all explorations are private and crafted to your interests—from biking to Cejas Lagoon to a nighttime astronomy exploration and visiting natives who are farmers and foragers,there’s a myriad of options to choose from. When you return, like coming home, comfort awaits with delicious food and wonderful wines. We adore curling up under a thick alpaca blanket by a roaring fire under the stars.
