Advertisement
Published: July 28th 2018
Here we are, back to Chile, for one of my preferred places in the world to come in the next few days...but first, we had a flight from Buenos Aires. We will come back to the Capital of Argentina, so wait for that blog!
One way flights in South America are impossibly expensive! So I'm happy to see that Sky Airlines is getting us where we want, at a very decent price. So we took the low cost flight to Santiago and next straight to Calama. Not much choice, it's this or expensive Latam....but on Latam, you end up buying your own food too these days!
I do remember one thing about San Pedro de Atacama that I visited 8 years ago, it is that the place is super expensive. So the idea was to go straight for the best before moving to Bolivia. But the good news first, Ibis has just opened a new hotel in Calama. 55usd per night, clean room, next door to the massive Jumbo supermarket and just a kilometer away from the bus terminal. So we landed late, and instead of connecting to San Pedro, it was a short taxi
ride to the Ibis!
Next morning, little stressful moment. First we did the opening of the Jumbo supermarket, to stock on goodies and some Chilean wines! Next, was supposed to be the bus from Turbus leaving at 10am for the 90 minutes drive to San Pedro...but our bus ended up 90 minutes late due to bad weather on the road from Antofogosta! Result, I knew we would do some of San Pedro on the run...slightly!
Next, it's Valle de la Luna time! I did the geysers and the lagunas last time, but they were better...and way cheaper to visit on the Bolivian side. Well, today, we couldn't have done the Geysers...up there, it's full of snow, and even 4x4 can't make it to the geysers for the last few days, a rarity around this very dry climate! But the Moon Valley is something out of this world to visit, and it is a perfect afternoon and sunset excursion out of San Pedro.
Most of the pictures are from the afternoon excursion to the Moon Valley. Our guide was a very nice local...and we did do some truly fun little treks. Enjoy
the pics, I have to admit, I love to play a little too much with the HDR landscape mode of my little camera....but these pictures are so much fun!
We made it first to the travel agency to confirm our details for next morning. Another change, there is some snow around, next morning wake up call would be at 4am! More to come!
Next, go to our sleeping pad. I know one thing for sure, for 60usd a night in San Pedro, you get close to nothing decent. Some friends from Congo did pass by few months ago, so I checked with them if San Pedro backpackers was ok. Here, 55usd get us two bunk beds in a 6 square meter truly little, but clean room with share showers. I know, crazy! But it was clean. We tried to sleep early, but failed as is was the weekly BBQ night! Well, we'll sleep later!
Lunch was the local and super good empanadas, and dinner was a pretty simple affair....yes, this place is more expensive than many in Europe! We were early in bed, as the serious adventure is awaiting us for
next morning...as well as spending the next few days mainly above 4000 meters!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.104s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 10; qc: 22; dbt: 0.0696s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Atacama Altiplano
Chile is expensive compared to the rest of South America Peter, but hey, one comes prepared for that. As you are going into the Atacama Altiplano I hope you are opening your wallet and I'll be interested to see if they take you where tourists usually do not go like they did for us. Enjoy.