San Pedro de Atacama

A magnetic attraction for foreign and Chilean tourists, San Pedro de Atacama is a place everyone should visit at least once. After that I recommend spending your Chile touring money elsewhere, the deep south in particular during the summertime. Nevertheless, northern Chile does provides some special gems in the way of viewscapes, and altiplano San Pedro, located in the “wide” section of Chile’s north and just over an hour south of the Calama airport, has plenty of them. Unlike the barren Atacama Desert at lower altitudes, the Altiplano is full of vegetation and wildlife. Here is a view looking south of town taken from a residential street:

More images of the surrounding landscapes can be seen in my recent entry Desert Routes in Chile. The town itself is quaint. It is full of adobe-construction colonial-era buildings and a couple neat hard packed dirt streets that bring one back in time. The night