SAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA

January 10, 2026

Eltoconar Atacama
San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Chilean Route 5

After leaving Cerro Pintados, we continued south, passing more geoglyphs along the way. The land was devoid of life, although we saw more scrubby trees growing in certain places. We followed Chilean Route 5 south for 200 kilometers before turning east on Route 24 and beginning to climb. Quickly, we began to see tufts of grass and small shrubs. We even saw one animal that must have been a guanaco. We climbed towards the top of a ridge and suddenly came to a complete stop behind a long line of cars. 

                                                                                

Road Closed for Blasting

We stopped at 14:50. When we had not moved by 15:30, we asked another traveler who had walked to the front of the line what was going on. She told us there was construction and the road would be closed until 17:00. We got out and walked up to the barricade, where we discovered that they were blasting. The sign said the road was closed from 12:00 to 17:00, Monday through Thursday and Saturday. Being Saturday, we were stuck. The traffic started moving about 16:05, shortly after we returned to the car, but we did not get far before we stopped again and waited until 17:00. We crept over the ridge and still had another 100 kilometers to go before we reached San Pedro de Atacama.

The Road to San Pedro de Atacama

Before we left Cerro Pintados, we had used their Starlink to message our accommodation to let them know that we would arrive between 17:00 and 18:00. I told them that we probably wouldn’t have signal during our drive. I had downloaded offline maps while we had signal, so we proceeded to the location indicated on Hotels.com. The gate was locked and, when Sally squeezed inside, she was told that it was a private residence. We had no signal, so we drove around the area and asked a couple of people, but no one had any idea where to find Casa Turis. We didn’t have a signal, so finally gave up and returned to the town of San Pedro de Atacama, where it was nearly impossible to park. When we finally managed to park, restarted our phones, and got signal, I called. No one answered my call or text on WhatsApp and, while the number was on WhatsApp, it did not appear to belong to Casa Turis. We finally had to give up and book another accommodation, ironically practically across the highway from where Casa Turis was reputed to be located.

Eltoconar Atacama

Eltoconar Atacama was not easy to locate, either, but we did find it behind a large, unmarked gate. The room was basic, but new, spacious, and comfortable. We had bought a bottle of wine on the way and finally settled down to munch on bread and cheese and enjoy a glass of wine. It was 21:00 by the time we settled in and we were quite glad that it didn’t get dark any earlier than that.

January 13, 2026
Hotel Andalucia
Arica, Chile

The Plaza in San Pedro de Atacama

We got up the next morning and drove into the center of San Pedro de Atacama to find some breakfast. We ate in an unassuming place right off the parking lot where they brought us three fried eggs and a large hunk of the local bread, along with hot milk with instant coffee to put in it. Sally had found us a nice hostal with two bedrooms for the same price as our motel room, so we decided to move. To fill the time between breakfast and check-in time, we explored the plaza, bought a few trinkets in the artisan market,

This Church Burned Three Times

checked out the church, and compared travel agencies. We ended up buying a package of four tours for 100,000 Chilean pesos (about $110.) The package included a tour of the Valley of the Moon, an astronomy tour, an early morning tour to El Tatio geysers, and an afternoon tour to the lakes of the Atacama Salt Flats. This seemed like a good, if busy, way to fill our two days in San Pedro de Atacama.

The Church in San Pedro de Atacama

After spending some time enjoying a cool drink in the plaza, we drove out to our new hostal and checked in. Hostal Don Felix was very nice and we were able to spread out a bit. At 16:00, the tour van arrived to pick us up. It was very hot and we were in shorts and sleeveless tops. We had told the travel agent that we had a car and would want to change to warm clothes before the astronomy tour and would drive ourselves into town because the astronomy tour ended at midnight and they wouldn’t be bringing us home.

Hostal Don Felix

Everything went alright, at first. We enjoyed the tour of the Valley of the Moon. Disney had filmed The Mandalorian in the dunes there. The Valley of the Moon is located in the Cordillera de Sal. When the Andes and the coast range where uplifted as two tectonic plates collided, the soft layers of salt in the interior basin folded dramatically, creating the red rocks of the Cordillera de Sal. It is easy to see the layers of sediment that were deposited when the area was level. Harder layers created ridges like the spines on a dragon’s back. The wind sculpted dunes were a different color because the sand had actually been blown there from the Domeyko range. We climbed to the top of the largest dune to survey the scenery and take pictures. We were blasted with blowing sand. From there, we could see another formation that looked like an amphitheater.

Dragon Spines

Dunes in Valle de la Luna

The Amphitheater

Salt Crystals

Our guide took us to an old salt mine where we could hear the salt crystals cracking in the afternoon heat. Then we visited some fanciful eroded rock formations that resembled things like a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a cat with a frog on its back. Finally, we stopped at a scenic spot where we were served pisco sours and a nice buffet of appetizers. We did not return until 20:30. This was a problem because they were not going to take us back to our hotel. Our travel agent had not told us this. We lived a few kilometers outside of town and needed to change and get our car before the astronomy tour began at 21:00.

The T-Rex

As soon as we had learned we weren’t going to be taken home, we had contacted the agent. We had no way to get home at midnight without our car and would have been cold in shorts, outside, in the desert night. We had originally been told the Moon Valley tour ended at 20:00, so we thought we’d have time to change and drive into town. We attempted to problem solve with the agent, but she stubbornly refused to help, not even allowing us to postpone the astronomy tour until the next night. She insisted that all tours had to begin with a pickup at our hostal, even though we begged to be allowed to meet the tour somewhere in the center of town. Then she stopped answering and went home. We were livid. Finally, we abandoned the idea of going to the astronomy tour. We couldn’t even find a cab to take us home and ended up walking for an hour on unlighted roads in the dark, not arriving home until after 22:00.

No sooner had we arrived home, than I received a message from the tour company taking us to the geysers in the morning. They were happy to meet us at the spot where we had been dropped off at the end of the last tour. We were not happy with our travel agent.

January 14. 2026
Comarca Valparaiso
Valparaiso, Chile

El Tatio Geyser Field

The next morning we got up at 3:30 so as to meet our driver at the Plazoleta Apacheta at 4:40. We picked up a few other passengers and then drove for about two hours up into the Andes, arriving at El Tatio geysers about 6:30. The sun was just coming up about the time everyone returned from the toilet stop.

The Geyser Field

The El Tatio geyser field is the third largest in the world, surpassed only by Yellowstone in the United States and the Valley of the Geysers in Kamchatka. Located at 14,170 feet (4320 meters), El Tatio is the highest geyser field in the world and features abundant eruptions, although none of them are very tall and we only saw one that was predictable. Geysers form when water interacts with the magma below and begins to boil. If the steam is not constricted, only a hot spring will form. When constricted, the steam will build up pressure until it blows. El Tatio has eighty active geysers, although most are quite small. There are also many fumeroles releasing steam. The geysers are most active and visible in the early morning hours, hence our painfully early departure.

Colorful Mineral Formations

El Horno

El Jefe

Sunrise at the Geysers

Our guide, Robinson, walked us around the field, offering explanations in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and English. The most common nationality of the tourists we met was Brazilian. We visited geysers with names such as “The Shell”, “The Oven”, “The Old Man Crying”, and “El Jefe.” Despite suffering from overtourism, the site was still impressive. The dawn over the Andes, combined with the steaming geysers, was memorable. While I am not a fan of video, I couldn’t resist taking videos of some of the geysers. Each was unique and many had created strange and beautiful mineral formations.

Fearless Andean Gull

Vicunas at Breakfast

Our guide was operating as both guide and driver and seemed a little scattered at first, but he was very knowledgeable and we gradually came to see that he gave us a better tour than the other guides. After the geysers, all of the tours stopped somewhere to serve a nice breakfast buffet. Robinson drove us farther into the wilderness than the other guides and we got to eat breakfast in the company of vicunas and an Andean gull that showed absolutely no fear when begging for food.

As we descended towards San Pedro de Atacama, we stopped to look at flamingos. Farther along, Robinson became very excited when he spotted a rare Andean condor. We stopped to watch it fly and I managed to capture it with my camera. Between that stop and the village of Machuca, we also saw wild burros.

Andean Condor

Chilean and Andean Flamingoes

Wild Burro

The tour stopped at Machuca. We were only supposed to stop for fifteen minutes, so we didn’t have time to visit the church. Unfortunately, some of the members of our tour went, anyway, so we were stuck there for over half an hour. Vendors were selling grilled llama meat. Having eaten a lot of llama and alpaca in Peru and Bolivia, I wasn’t interested.

We got some more great shots of flamingos at another lake down the mountain, including some of flamingos in flight. We were quite late in returning, but the time had been well spent.

While on the geyser tour, I had managed to communicate with our travel agent, asking if we could meet our afternoon tour at the plazoleta where all the tours ended (and where we had parked our car.) She told us it would be better if we met at the tour company office, which was fine with us. We ate a pizza across the street and had plenty of time to arrive at the office by 15:00.

One of the Ojos

Ducks at Los Ojos

We drove over the Cordillera de Sal we had visited the day before and out into the Salar de Atacama (Atacama salt flat.) Our guide, Tomas, first took us to Los Ojos, two twin freshwater sinkholes that were interconnected. Back in the 70’s, someone had accidentally allowed a car to roll into one of them, polluting the water. Today, ducks have returned, indicating that the water is once again clean.

Lago Tebenquiche

Stromatolites at Tebenquiche

At Tebenquiche, we went for a short walk along the shore of the salt lake. This lake contains the formations know as stromatolites, believed to be similar to the first life on earth.

Lizard at Luguna Cejar

Laguna Cejar

We then visited Laguna Cejar and Laguna Piedra. A nice park has been developed beside these lagoons.  It offered a shaded viewing platform at Laguna Cejar and beautiful showers and dressing rooms at Laguna Piedra so that visitors can easily float in the extremely salty water that provides extra buoyancy. Swimmers are only allowed to stay in the water for 20 minutes to avoid burns from the salt water.

Floating in Laguna Piedro

The water was cold, at first, but felt good on a hot day once we got used to it. We encountered a woman named Coral that we had met the previous day in the Valley of the Moon and had our pictures taken with her. After showering and dressing, Tomas took us to a spot with a little shade and served us pisco sours and some nice snacks. They returned us to the plazoleta near where we had parked and we were able to drive back to our hostal and fall into bed.

January 15, 2026
Comarca Valparaiso
Valparaiso, Chile

We were up at 5:30 and left San Pedro de Atacama before 7:00. We did not want to get stuck in another highway closure. We drove as far as Calama and then stopped for gas. We considered looking for breakfast, but just ate the last of our cookies and kept going. I was the driver and we had 700 kilometers to cover. I drank half a bottle of flat Coke Zero and pressed on.

We Couldn't Resist a Selfie

There were a couple of stretches of unpaved road where we had to wait for flagmen, but the road was open. We got over the mountains without incident and turned north. Sally was on the lookout for a restaurant. There are almost no services along Chilean Route 5. There was one roadside restaurant that serviced tour buses, but no one was around and the locals told us it wasn’t very good. We took a selfie with a humorous sign and continued on. We had driven for about six hours by the time we reached Pozo Almonte, just shy of the turnoff for Iquique. We stopped there for lunch. Sally had an egg and cheese sandwich that could easily have fed two. I had soup, a very nice butterflied chicken breast sauteed in garlic, and a pile of spaghetti that would have fed a family of four. I was incredibly thirsty and downed a bottle of Coke Zero even though I don’t like the stuff. Then I was awake.

Restaurnat in Pozo Almonte

Back on the road, we passed the turnoff for Iquique and headed for Arica. At the Mirador Chiza, we stopped to admire some very clear geoglyphs. The road ascended steep hills and then dropped into deep canyons. The only vegetation was in the oases in the bottoms of the canyons where water ran down from the mountains.

Geoglyphs at Mirador Chiza

We reached Arica about 17:00 and stopped to refuel the car. Our little diesel Citroen had been amazingly efficient. We returned to the Hotel Andalucia, drank the last bit of our bottle of wine, and retired early.