Stop Over in San Pedro de Atacama

We had originally planned to stay a little while in the north of Chile but a tour of the Bolivian salt flats became available and we took up the opportunity. This meant hot-footing it across to San Pedro de Atacama, a small town 240 kilometres east of Antofagasta and forty minutes from the Bolivian border. The town has a very different look and feel to the rest of Chile, largely because this was once part of Bolivia in the nineteenth century. It still has a nineteenth century feel to it with dirt roads, mud-brick houses and only a few street lights.

We also noticed the change in altitude, as San Pedro sits at 2403 metres above sea-level. As soon as we got off the bus, we felt that we couldn't breathe as easily, and any physical exertion left us out of breath. So when we got lost trying to find our hostel, we were less than thrilled. Not only had we been travelling all day but we desperately wanted to find our accommodation before we collapsed, as we walked at a snail's pace, carrying our 15kg backpacks. We were also fast running out of time and daylight to get supplies and money for the three-day tour of the Bolivian salt flats the next day.

We found the correct street of our hostel but trying to find the correct property wasn't so easy. The street seemed to go for miles from one side of town to the other. Normally hiking across town wouldn’t be a problem but with the change in the altitude and lack of sleep, the task seemed to be defeating us. Eventually, we were pointed in the right direction, which meant traversing back through familiar territory to get to our destination. We had changed directions because it appeared that the numbering of the houses were increasing. Who would have guessed that 19a came after 590!

We had little time to explore San Pedro, although it felt like we had already walked all over the small town. While the town only has a population of about 4000 people, the population swells with tourists who are either about to go on a tour of the salt flats, like us, or have just finished a tour. We knew that we would have very little access to modern comforts, including clean, fresh water so we needed to stock-up. The small shops in San Pedro were no bigger than a broom closet with a small number of items on their selves. Once we had our supplies for our tour, we then needed to mentally prepare ourselves for 3 days without internet! We were also a bit worried about how we might handle a further increase in altitude. We were reassured that the tour guide would be carrying coca leaves, which would assist with altitude sickness. Nevertheless, images of mountaineers being pulled from mountains half-dead ran through our minds. Will the next stop be our last stop?

Next stop: Salar de Uyuni and Uyuni.Read more