Atacama Desert

Atacama Desert Trips & Tours

Atacama Desert

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4.9/5 (911 reviews)

Travel and Leisure Worlds Best Awards for number 1 tour operator in the world 2024 and number 2 tour operator in the world 2025
We're one of the World's Best Tour Operators!
Voted No.1 in 2024 and No.2 in 2025 by Travel+Leisure
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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

Start with a recommended trip or create one from scratch

Chilean adventure: deserts to glaciers
Chile

Chilean adventure: deserts to glaciers

10 nights from $10.5K per person

All the highlights of Chile
Chile

All the highlights of Chile

20 nights from $20.6K per person

Vineyards, desert scenes & Easter Island
Chile

Vineyards, desert scenes & Easter Island

14 nights from $13K per person

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Our Experts

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or call us on: +1 (646) 542 0667

Jonty

Jonty Medcalf

Africa and Antarctica Travel Specialist

Joanna

Joanna Rigby-Jones

Africa & South America Travel Specialist

Annie

Annie Irankunda

Africa Travel Specialist

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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Desert exploring

Learn the constellations stargazing in Atacama

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Walk among spurting geysers at El Tatio in Atacama

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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Reviews

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Based on 18 Feefo Reviews for Chile

Guest
April 2026
17 nights in Chile and Argentina
April Solomon
February 2026
8 nights in Argentina and Chile
Straights of Magellan
Guest
Straights of Magellan
January 2026
6 nights in Chile and Argentina
Excellent service and support.
Excellent experience
Lyn
Excellent experience
November 2025
3 nights in Chile
Everything was great. I started to put our trip together on my own. Timbuktu was just as cost efficient, their providers were top notch, and they saved me all kinds of time.
All in all very good, experience with Timbuktu travel. Very professional.
Guest
All in all very good, experience with Timbuktu travel. Very professional.
October 2025
10 nights in Chile
Corolla, was excellent, easy to contact and immediately response. This was very reassuring. We had many domestic flights in the country during our travel to Chile, and we had absolutely no problem at the airport. We had airport transfers. Everything went accordingly. I was not happy that we missed the glacier viewing the boat ride in Patagonia, it was a major thing, and I wish that they made me aware of that beforehand. It’s a big thing and the trip was expensive so I would’ve liked to have seen that… but otherwise everything else went seemingly very well. I was happy with the company all in all. The hotels were good as well, thank you
Love my team at Timbuktu
Ricky McGrath
Love my team at Timbuktu
August 2025
5 nights in Chile
Great ideas and responsiveness. Attention to detail. Prepared to make recommendations even if there is no direct benefit.

Why travel with Timbuktu?

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Tailor-Made Since 2014

Tailor-Made Since 2014

We've been crafting one-of-a-kind journeys since 2014 — over 2,500 trips across 40+ countries, each one built from scratch around your interests and dreams.

Specialists Who've Been There

Specialists Who've Been There

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The World's No 1 Tour Operator

Travel+Leisure's readers voted us the World's No.1 Tour Operator in 2024 and No.2 in 2025 — the travel industry's biggest readers' award, judged by people who actually travel.

Every Trip Makes A Difference

Every Trip Makes A Difference

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Collaboration Is Key

Collaboration Is Key

Your travel specialist is with you the whole way, dreaming up the trip, building the itinerary, checking you in, and answering the 2am question from the other side of the world..

Loved By Our Guests

Loved By Our Guests

We are rated 4.9 out of 5 from 911 verified Feefo reviews. And these are the words of people who actually went, not us talking about ourselves.

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11 Condé Nast Traveler Top Travel Specialists 2026

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Travel Specialist voted as Latin America A-List Travel Advisor 2025

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"Timbuktu can take relatively complex and slightly amorphous travel plans and transform them into a well-organized, perfectly tailored trip."

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