We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama after a long bus ride from Valporaiso and a nights stop over in Calama (the worst town so far on our travels). After having paint thrown over us in Calama and a number of people trying to steal our bags we were glad to make it San Pedro with all our belongings still on us, minus the $24 the restaurant charged us the night before for a plate of fries topped with sausage and cheese.
San Pedro de Atacama is a small dusty town in the middle of the Atacama desert with a certain degree of charm to it. It’s also a bit of a money sucking town. To save money we stayed in a hostel a couple Km out of town in a tent in their backyard.
The streets of San Pedro are lined with tour operators basically all offering the same tours for varied prices. We did two tours of the Atacama Desert, the first to the Geysers el Tatio, one of the largest geysers in the world. To see the geysers at their best meant leaving at 0400 in the morning and -12 degree weather. The geysers were pretty amazing, flumes of boiling hot smoke and bubbling water spouting from the ground across a large section of desert.
The next tour was to the valley de la Luna later that afternoon. The weather had well and truely warmed up to ‘desert hot’ and walking through open areas of desert was a bit uncomfortable. The sunset across the Atacama though was beautiful.
The tours were a good way to see the desert, since without a car it is difficult to see on your own. But being us we don’t really love tours and found it a little bit tedious.
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