Our family friend told us about a sale on flights on Sky Airlines, a local airline, so without thinking too much, I booked some ~$40 round trip flights to Calama, the closest airport to San Pedro de Atacama, a short trip from Sunday to Tuesday. I didn’t do a lot of research before this, but I’m glad I made the quick decision because I really enjoyed exploring the Atacama desert and just appreciating the peacefulness of nature and undeveloped landscape.
When I first started looking into the logistics of my impulsive decision, I was a little overwhelmed by all of the options and the little amount of online information. San Pedro de Atacama is a relatively touristy town, mostly for backpackers. So the options include a lot of hostels, hotels, and dozens of tour companies with hundreds of tour options. In the end, we picked a mid-range hotel Jardin Atacama and decided against doing any tours and renting a car instead.
The first evening, we drove to San Pedro de Atacama – it took a couple hours to rent a car and drive to our hotel so we just had time to get dinner and go to sleep.
The next day was our first full day. We followed the road from San Pedro de Atacama to Laguna Miscanti and Laguna Miniques. We chose this route because it was largely on paved roads and seemed the easiest to do on our own, and we stopped at Laguna Chaxa (marked by a flamingo on the map) and Socaire for lunch. While we did get lost on the road to Laguna Chaxa, a park ranger driving around flagged us down and pointed us towards the right direction, along with several other cars we saw also going the wrong way.
The salt valleys create the strangest landscape that look almost like snow, and driving around felt like we were on another planet. But my favorite part of the day was watching the flamingos in their natural habitat. Their walking around and occasionally flying, showing off the pink and black contrast of their wings, it was absolutely amazing. The guy at the hotel had warned us that the flamingos go farther away from the paths towards the afternoon, but around 11am, they were still close enough to get a great view.
Laguna Miscanti and Laguna Miniques was a little while further but the scenery changed with light green brush and snow/salt speckled mountains all around. As we were driving the elevation changed quickly until we were about 13,000 ft above sea level. As we were walking around I felt light headed, the elevation was definitely getting to me. It was an interesting experience and lovely, but I probably wouldn’t do that again. But we saw a fox on the drive back, so it was totally worth it.
Once we got back to the hotel, we were exhausted, but after resting for a little bit, we walked around San Pedro de Atacama. We visited the Museo de La Paige, a very small museum all in spanish, featuring archeological findings from the Atacama region and northern Chile. Because the climate is so dry, most of the pieces including textiles were preserved very well. Afterwards, we walked around the town square and downtown. In the evening, the downtown street made of dirt lined with adobe buildings feels like a night market, bustling with shops and restaurants and people. They also have a few ice cream shops with fun flavors of local fruits/vegetables/plants like cactus fruit and coca.
The next morning we went to Valle de la Luna, a park about 10 minutes drive outside of San Pedro. It’s so close, we even saw people taking bike tours and going on horseback (but I’m glad we took a car because even though it was the dead of winter, it was still warm enough to be in t-shirts and shorts). And we heard it’s a good afternoon tour to take after the longer morning tours to Laguna Miscanti or the geysers or farther tours from San Pedro de Atacama and to watch the sunset. But I heard that they only let in private cars in the morning before the bulk of commercial tours and it was perfect for us to do on our way back to the airport.
At Valle de la Luna, we spent about a couple hours, driving, parking, getting out of the car, taking some pictures, getting back in the car and repeating, making 4 stops – the entry gate, an hour hike, a salt mine, and a viewpoint at the end. Unfortunately, the salt caverns were destroyed by heavy rains this year, one thing that I wanted to see. But getting out and hiking was fun, the weather was surprisingly warm for what we thought would be winter weather, and the most amazing thing was that there were no crowds! We did have to pass up one more hour long hike, but we managed to do everything at Valle de la Luna in the morning before we had to head back to the airport.
In the end, I was really glad that we rented a car to be able to go at our own time. The roads were pretty well marked and we had reception most of the time. Also, I saw a tour guide rushing people at the flamingo site and I’m glad we got more time. However, the drive got a little taxing, especially after being in such high elevation and I could only have done it with another driver other than myself. Overall a fantastic little detour to San Pedro de Atacama.