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The high desert and the Andean lakes · Chile

Atacama and the Altiplano

The driest desert on earth, at altitude, with salt flats, geyser fields and the clearest night sky you will ever stand under.

Plan a trip here

San Pedro de Atacama sits at 2,400 metres, and almost everything worth seeing from it is higher. The altiplano above it runs to 4,300 metres, which is a real number that a real body has to deal with.

So we build these trips around acclimatisation rather than around a checklist. Two easy days low down. Then the salt flats and the lagoons. Then, only then, the geyser field at El Tatio at dawn, which is at 4,320 metres and is miserable if you have rushed it.

In return you get a landscape with no analogue: salt crust that cracks under your boots, flamingos on water that should not support anything, volcanoes in a row along the Bolivian border, and a sky so free of moisture that the observatories came here.

Best time
March to May and September to November
Why then
The shoulder months are clear, calm and less cold at altitude. Book moonless nights if the sky matters to you; we check the calendar for you.
When not to
The altiplanic winter, roughly late December to February, brings afternoon storms that close the El Tatio road and flood the lagoon tracks without warning.
Getting there
Fly to Santiago, then two hours to Calama and an hour by road to San Pedro. We build a night in Santiago rather than connecting straight through; the altitude is easier after a night's sleep.

What it is for

Highlights

  • Salar de Atacama at first light

    Salt crust, shallow brine, and flamingos feeding in water two centimetres deep.

  • The altiplanic lagoons

    Miscanti and Minques at 4,100 metres, with the wind off them and vicuna on the ridge.

  • El Tatio before dawn

    Eighty geysers at minus ten. Unpleasant, unforgettable, and worth doing exactly once.

  • A night under the Atacama sky

    With an astronomer, a telescope and no plan to be anywhere.

Atacama and the Altiplano in six frames

Salt crust polygons on the Salar de Atacama running to the Andes at first light
Salt crystal at the edge of a brine pool at Chaxa with a flamingo beyond
An adobe street in San Pedro de Atacama with two people walking and painted shop boards
Laguna Miscanti at four thousand metres below the Miscanti and Minques cones
Steam columns rising at the El Tatio geyser field before sunrise

From the advisor

The night the sky is the itinerary

There is a spot forty minutes out of San Pedro where the ground is flat, the horizon is unbroken and there is no light within thirty kilometres. We take travellers there on a moonless night with an astronomer, folding chairs and a flask.

People who thought they were not interested in stars sit out there for two hours. The Magellanic Clouds are visible to the naked eye. It is, reliably, the evening that ends up in the thank-you email.

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Experiences

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Practical

Things worth knowing first

  • Altitude is the whole game

    Arrive, sleep, walk slowly, drink twice what you think. Everything good here is above 3,000 metres.

  • It is cold at night, always

    The desert loses all its heat after sunset. Thirty degrees at three, near freezing at five in the morning.

  • Two or three excursions, not five

    Everything is an hour or more from town. Doubling up makes for a long, thin day.

Who plans it

Your advisor for Chile

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