The Town of San Pedro de Atacama

To truly understand the town, you have to walk the streets and understand the demographics. The town is almost 2 hours from Calama, which is not a thriving metropolis, but is a mining town. Calama is the nearest hospital, so residents in San Pedro will tell you that no babies are born in San Pedro.

The natural wonders of the Atacama Desert were introduced to the world by a Belgian Priest, in the 1970s. However, Pinochet took over Chile in 1972, and privatized many of the sites, like the salt flats which were mined for salt. The growth of the town began around 1990.

The sole reason for San Pedro to exist is tourism. Approximately 5000 people live in town, and they all service they tourist industry — as shopkeepers, hotel workers, and tour guides. Everyone that we met was from someplace else in Chile and mostly they are pretty young (under 40). The tour guides are predominantly male (one of the guides told me that the ratio is 70/30, but we didn’t encounter a single woman who worked for a tour company who was doing anything other than office work.). I suspect that being a guide is a pretty appealing life for someone who likes to be outside, and is gregarious. Working in a shop . . . Not so much.

The town itself is small, and you can walk through it in less than 30 minutes. Mostly it is filled with hostels, a few nice hotels (like where we stayed) and some super high end resorts ($1000 per day, all inclusive, with tours). And, many tour guide outfits and restaurants.

The streets are mostly unpaved and dusty. There are stray dogs everywhere, which is actually a “thing” in Chile, as there are no leash laws or prohibitions against abandoning dogs. There are street lights on wooden pole, which sometimes work. Really, there is not much to recommend the town, other than being a gateway to the beautiful sights of the Chilean Andes.Read more