Atacama Desert

Atacama Desert Trips & Tours

Atacama Desert

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Atacama Desert Trips & Tours

A lunar landscape squashed between the Pacific and the Andes and home to ultimate desert adventures
We’d hazard a guess that the arid Atacama is pretty high-up on most Chilean bucket-lists – and we wouldn’t argue with that. The Martian-like terrain of one of the driest places on the planet is not only spectacularly scenic but also surprising, exciting and an excellent playground for adventurers, wildlife enthusiasts and anyone with a camera. First up, the landscape. It’s everything you would expect a desert to be – rusty vastness, glinting salt pans, craggy rocks and weird, layer-cake formations – and a little bit more. We’re talking spurting, hissing geysers, flocks of candy-pink flamingo, oases and cacti-studded ravines, and a cast of wildlife that includes llamas, alpacas, vizcacha and, if you’re lucky, vicuñas. So, how to see and do it all? Handily a crop of dreamy, desert-chic hotels has recently cropped up in the outpost of San Pedro, the jumping-off point for most travellers, offering 4WD drives, fat-biking and geyser-hiking, sunset picnics, sand-boarding experiences, wildlife walks, and even horse-back rides. All are designed for minimum environmental impact – yet maximum visuals! – keeping this ethereal landscape just the way it should be.
Trips

Atacama Desert Trips & Tours

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Chilean adventure: deserts to glaciers
Chile

Chilean adventure: deserts to glaciers

10 nights from $9.9K per person

All the highlights of Chile
Chile

All the highlights of Chile

20 nights from $20K per person

Vineyards, desert scenes & Easter Island
Chile

Vineyards, desert scenes & Easter Island

14 nights from $13K per person

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Things to do

What to do in Atacama Desert

The driest sand desert on Earth, the Atacama is a surreal landscape sandwiched between the Andes and the ocean. Once you're there, exploring is all you'll want to do... Options include scenic drives, hikes, fat biking, sand boarding and and horseback rides, and the sights you'll see? Well, how do geysers erupting in columns of steam, rainbow-coloured mountains and crackling salt flats sound? Amongst this seemingly unsurvivable environment, you can also spot flocks of pink flamingos, llamas and the bunny-like viscacha. When you need to cool off, enjoy a weightless dip in the salty Cejar Lagoon then, after sunset (best enjoyed in the aptly-named Moon Valley), join an astronomer for a journey through the stars.

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Visit the Hidden Lagoons of Baltinache

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Bike across the Moon Valley in the Atacama Desert

Desert exploring

See the sunset turn the Moon Valley pink, Atacama

Why you'll love it

Why you'll love it

Because it's utterly, completely, ends-of-the-earth remote. This is the place that NASA uses to test its instruments going to Mars, and the scene of many a James Bond movie, after all. How cool?
Off the beaten track

Off the beaten track

It’s no secret but the thin, dry, desert air makes for skies that are as a clear-as-a-bell and out-of-this-world stargazing. If you can, visit the Ahlarkapin Observatory; you’ll be joined by a guide who will bring the celestial wonderland before you to life.
Something to think about

Something to think about

From Patagonia or even Santiago, the altitude difference is quite noticeable. Give yourself time to acclimatise to the effects of the height and the intense sunlight – and take a good moisturiser for skin, lips and noses!
Best time to visit

When to go on a Atacama Desert Trip

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