San Pedro de Atacama

We took a night bus from Pucon to get us to Santiago. We spent a few hours killing time in a shopping mall before heading to the airport to fly to Calama. From there we took a shared taxi/shuttle to the town of San Pedro. It was like entering the wild wild west.

Accommodation: Casa Voyage. This was a lovely hostel and the top rated to stay. It was very camp-like with lots of individual buildings and outdoor hangout areas. They did a group dinner every night. We were there for burger night and pizza night. Both included wine for a total of £5.

-Day one. We spent the morning sussing out tours for the following days and how best to enter the salt flats. We ended up booking three tours through the company Eco Tours for a total of £108.
We did the 3pm tour to Valle de la Luna (moon valley). It included a picnic with Pisco sours. The scenery was very impressive and we got a gorgeous sunset.
-Day two. We did a full day tour to Piedras rojas. This was so enjoyable. The guide was excellent and told us so many great facts. I learned that cactuses grow arms for balance and the lama came about from the vicuna and guanaco cross breeding. Also that vicunas are the ones with yellow faces while the guanaco has a black face. The air is so clear in the Atacama that the human eye can see three times its normal distance and it's also the second driest place on earth. The driest surprisingly is Antarctica. We saw several lagoons with flamingos and some impressive red rock. The tour included an excellent breakfast and lunch.
In the evening we went star gazing. The Atacama is the best place in the world for viewing stars. It was really great to be able to see the moon through a telescope and learn that the closest star to the moon is actually Mars.
-Day three. We designated this day to planning. It was a bit of a struggle considering pretty much all networks went down. The down side to being in a desert! We lazed by the pool and ended up going to an electronic club with the hostel.

Recommendations;
Booked our tours through EcoTours. Found them pretty good and they let you haggle the price. Also booked our salt flat tour with them.
Roots sandwich bar.Okumaya devam et