San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Welcome to our (very) quick detour to Chile, our country number 10! 🥳 We specifically decided to get to San Pedro because it is not only possible to go directly from the Salar de Uyuni tour, but also because we really wanted to see the nearby Atacama desert. The Atacama desert is a very special place because it is not only the driest (non-polar) place on earth with rainless periods of up to 4 years, but also has been the playground and testing area for the Curiosity Mars rover prototypes - that‘s how similar the landscapes are to Mars!
The small city of San Pedro de Atacama is mainly used as gateway to the desert and is therefore throughoutly touristy - but in a very cute way. It has largely maintained its village feeling, even though dotted it with (many! 🙃) shops, restaurants, cafes and travel agencies. We were not only pleased by the aesthetics of all the hostels, restaurants and the beautiful town itself, but also a tad shocked (in a very positive way) about the comfort we got there: lovely rooms, a comfortable bed and a shower with instant 24-hours hot water (!), very good water pressure (!!) and NO instantaneous water heater (!!!) threathening to give you an electric shock every time you try to shower - what a difference to Bolivia! Even though we missed the inflatable toilet seats 🤷🏻‍♀️ Moreover, all of a sudden cars stop on the street to let you cross - you can‘t imagine our confusion the first time it happened 😂 Of course, you also pay the price for the luxury you get, but as we knew already it did not shock us too much.
As we came specifically to San Pedro for the desert, we booked two tours: One to the rainbow valley (as we had missed the rainbow mountains in Peru due to Alinas stomach 😢) and one to the very famous Mars- and Moon valleys. (There were many other tours as well, but as most included lagoons and a hot spring which we already had during the Salar de Uyuni tour, we skipped them). We actually also booked an astrophotography tour, because the desert is said to be one of the best places on earth to watch the nightsky (and features a big observatorium where they actually still do research on space!), but OF COURSE the sky was covered in clouds that evening 🙄 Our luck really does not seem to get better with time… Anyways, also without professional (very romantic 🥲) pictures of us under the desert night sky we spent three lovely evenings in San Pedro and enjoyed the superb Austral beer (one if the best we‘ve tasted so far!!), eating a lot to get Alina back to strength after Bolivia 😄 and planning our further trip. Oh, and we went to a lovely, tiny meteor museum which belongs to two brothers, which was very interesting! So all in all, highly recommended to spend a few days in comfort and to visit the totally awesome Atacama desert!Read more