11 magical highlights of Chile’s Atacama Desert
12 min read
With its lunar landscapes, feeling of ethereal wonder, and no scarcity of outdoor excursions to be appreciated, Chile’s Atacama Desert is a truly special journey desired destination – one that is unmatched any where else on Earth.
This, the driest desert on the world, is dwelling to historic rock formations thousands and thousands of decades aged, eternally clear night time skies, boutique motels, and a surprising cultural heritage that just must be explored during any tailor-designed trip to Chile.
No make a difference your need, no matter whether it be discovering otherworldly canyons and clifftop viewpoints of Moon Valley, easily floating in a substantial-Andean salt lake, or traveling to tiny, classic villages that have flourished in the desert for generations, you will find it in Atacama. Below, we spotlight just 11 of the top rated encounters that do not even commence to list all the exceptional encounters available.
Stargaze into the world’s clearest night sky
The Atacama Desert is one of the driest destinations in the planet, with some areas of it not possessing experienced rainfall for above 400 many years. This absence of dampness in the air signifies often obvious skies, which completely incorporate with the area’s significant altitude and non-existent light-weight pollution to make Atacama one particular of the greatest stargazing destinations on earth. Staying an astronomer’s paradise, some of the world’s most important observatories (La Silla, Paranal, ALMA, the Llano de Chajnantor, and so on.) have picked out to settle in this region.
Vacationers ought to hold in intellect that from April via September Atacama boasts cloudless skies, earning this a peak time period to appreciate our Milky Way’s glittering selection of stars, in addition to Jupiter and Saturn. You won’t even need a telescope to see the breathtaking light-weight demonstrate previously mentioned.
You can also select to go on a star gazing tour where an qualified information will lead you by way of the cosmos, pointing out constellations, planets, and galaxies with telescopes that reveal the wonders of the universe in astonishing depth. You will both camp in the desert and admire the stars all night extensive or go on a night time hike to a remote area where by you can gaze at the heavens previously mentioned.
Stargazing excursions can also take a look at some observatories this sort of as ALMA, the world’s greatest observatory, which is open up to the general public. There, you can gaze into the stars as a result of substantial-run telescopes and study from an astronomer about constellations and other night time sky attributes. Whatever your solution, you’re certain to see why the evening sky in the Atacama Desert is claimed to be the greatest in the world.
Take a look at the distinctive lunar landscapes of Moon Valley
Valle de la Luna was formed by the accumulation of sand, clay, and salt into mountains which ended up ruined by the earth’s movements but formed by wind and h2o over time.
Nevertheless dubbed Moon Valley for its otherworldly appearance, the majestic Valle de la Luna has been when compared to the floor of Mars. Being so similar to our neighboring planet, NASA has even analyzed instruments intended for their Mars missions in this region.
Most of the guided tours to the Valley of the Moon commence with the Death Valley lookout. Then it’s more than to the breathtaking Stone of Coyote viewpoint a exciting walk by means of a salt cavern and a search at the Amphitheatre and Tres Marias rock formations. The final tour is up to the sunset viewpoint. It’s at sunset when this aspect of the desert definitely shines. As the solar dips beneath the horizon, the valley’s rocky formations cast extended shadows and the hues shift from heat oranges to deep purples and blues. It is an ethereal experience, where by you truly feel like you have remaining Earth for a further earth.
Float easily in ‘a desert total of water’
A have to for any journey to Atacama, the Moon Valley is a stunning place of beguiling geology and – you guessed it – lunar-like landscapes. The openness provides to its attract, enabling you to stand and watch as the mild transforms rugged rocks into a rainbow of coloration, particularly at sunset without the need of a doubt the ideal time to go to Valle de la Luna.
The Atacama Desert bears no scarcity of bodies of drinking water. Oddly plenty of, it is a desert complete of h2o! One particular of the swimming pools that is a preferred of travelers who want to get a dip is Laguna Cejar, a sinkhole lake in the Salar de Atacama, Chile’s premier salt flat. As the lake’s focus of salt can achieve as high as 28 percent, this enables 1 to float on it easily. Moreover, it’s the great way to awesome off from the intensive desert heat. This is the magic of Atacama pools like Laguna Cejar, a surreal salt lagoon which is saltier than the Useless Sea.
Bathe in a desert oasis at the Puritama Sizzling Spring
Even though located in the middle of the world’s driest desert, you can delight in the chic knowledge of soaking in the thermal waters of the Puritama Hot Springs (Termas de Puritama). Here, you’ll obtain a muscle mass-enjoyable check out to the Termas de Puritama Incredibly hot Spring a properly-deserved pause after a handful of times of exploring the desert.
Located in a canyon, this oasis consists of eight massive swimming pools that are warmed by geothermal springs fueled by the surrounding volcanic Andes. The warm, mineral-loaded waters have extensive been treasured for their therapeutic qualities that are sworn to alleviate rheumatism and arthritis because of to the high focus of sodium sulfate. In any situation, they are absolutely sure to deliver peace to weary vacationers.
This was the fantastic way to rehydrate your overall body when getting a fun and soothing time in the water. Most will concur that the early morning offers the excellent distinction of amazing breezes through the canyon and the heat waters of the pools. Additionally, an early early morning soak will make it possible for you to experience the pools with smaller crowds of folks. Nevertheless, at any time of the working day, you are going to obtain the transparent drinking water is as distinct as glass and quickly inviting!
Sand surf down a person of the world’s maximum dunes
Sandboarding down the never-ending dunes in Atacama is a fantastic thrill and actual physical problem, best for experience vacationers. Just outside of Atacama’s oasis town of San Pedro, you can board down substantial, sandy, 100-lawn stretches in the desert’s El Valle de los Muertos (Loss of life Valley) or El Valle de Martes (Mars Valley) and get pleasure from adrenaline-filled fun in the sunlight!
Boards can be rented in the city of San Pedro, or you can just appear to the valley to watch the locals reducing it up and down the dunes.
A superior little bit farther afield is Atacama’s Cerro Medanoso dune. Looming a quarter of a mile above the desert simple, it is the tallest in Chile and is regarded the 2nd-maximum dune in the environment. It is not only terrific sand boarding but a place in itself and a special photographic prospect. Listed here, you will explore a stark landscape of eroded lava and sandstone formations nestled among this and other clean dunes of the Mar de Dunas (Sea of Dunes) that stretch for miles, earning this the suitable region for thrill seekers.
Property to 80 lively geysers, El Tatio is the world’s 3rd most significant geyser area, and — at extra than 14,000 ft higher than sea stage — it is the world’s maximum geyser industry. At this geothermal subject, fumaroles generate a surreal image as they spurt clouds of steam up to 35 ft into the sky.
Expertise the awesome Tatio Geysers
The best time to witness this magnificent sight is sunrise, which is when the very low morning temperatures also act to protect against the steam from the geysers from evaporating. The angle of the early morning light-weight casts an ethereal glow on these clouds of steam. This makes an immensely magical spectacle over the stark landscape, bathing the billowing clouds in a golden light and painting an otherworldly photo.
In the azure clarity of this significant-altitude desert, the visual impression of the geysers, thermal wells, and steaming fumaroles at dawn is unforgettable. All this calls for a extremely early get started, but no question it’s nicely worth braving chilly temperatures and the early pre-dawn get started.
Come across inner peace amid the stark Atacama Salt Flats
The eye-popping Atacama Salt Flat sprawls throughout a 1,200-sq.-mile location and is a surprise to behold. Splayed out beneath a cornflower-blue sky, this area is the star of numerous a guidebook address thanks to the salt flat’s hanging contrast of colors and its periodic mirror-like qualities.
This reflective high-quality seems when there’s the rarest of rain in the Atacama Desert. The salt flat fills with h2o and turns into a salt lake, nevertheless different from any lake you have noticed ahead of. The soil doesn’t take up the rainwater swiftly, so when flash flooding happens, a slim layer of water varieties, generating a giant mirror as a result reflecting the surrounding mountains a authentic take care of for any photographer!
Consider a lot of shots and engage in with the optical illusions of this position. Be prepared to photograph other wildlife species these as vicuñas, Culpeo foxes, Puna guinea pigs, Andean seagulls, golden plovers, pigeon ducks, and numerous others. As a enjoyable fact, the salt flat is property to 40% of the world’s lithium reserves.
Capture spectacular desert wildlife on movie
In the Atacama Desert, you can watch otherworldly landscapes, sight stars like in no other component of the environment, engage in adventure sports activities, and chill out in its salty waters, but that’s not all. You can also place outstanding Chilean wildlife and choose household pictures for family members, pals, and envious coworkers.
Nevertheless the Atacama Desert is the driest desert on Earth, the area tends to make for an unexpectedly diverse habitat that includes salt lakes and greener places fed by sea mists or mountain meltwater. For that reason, most vegetation and mammals of the area cling to the edges of restricted sources of h2o. These animals consist of llamas and llama-like vicunas and alpacas, as properly as huemel deer, gray fox, viscacha (the major member of the chinchilla household), and even penguins(!) together the coastline.
But what about flamingos? We wouldn’t blame you if you’ve hardly ever thought to glance for these tropical birds in the desert, but the shocking actuality is that there are really three flamingo species that you can see in the Atacama location. The large salinity and alkalinity of Atacama’s salt lakes never faze the evolutionarily organized flamingos considering that the higher salinity suggests extra of their favorite foods: blue-green algae that these birds filter from the mud with their specialized down-curved bills. All of this can make for some beautiful sights and shots.
Indulge in all the features of a boutique desert lodge
Situated in northern Chile’s amazing Atacama Desert – concerning the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains, on the edge of the small oasis village of San Pedro de Atacama, you’ll locate a scattering of some of the most one of a kind, environmentally welcoming, comfortable, and effectively-built luxury lodges in South The us.
In just a stone’s toss of snow-capped volcanoes, shimmering salt pans, and the Andes, these lodges replicate the magical mood of the world’s driest desert. Most of these accommodations are pueblo or adobe model and blend in with the pure landscape. They give remarkable company, authentic delicacies, and warm décor. Their spas can be explained as “adventure spas,” with the plan staying that company can experience the outdoor actively and adventurously, later returning to the lodge for pampering at the spa (or relaxation on the lodges’ grounds).
The major and most at ease luxury lodges in the spot have names like Tierra Atacama, Awasi Atacama, Alto Atacama Desert Lodge and Spa, and Explora Atacama. However each and every has its own unique character, they all element a blend of Atacameño historic architecture blended with modern day design and style for a chic present-day ambiance.In addition to spacious and well-appointed guest rooms, each lodge can boast of its personal 5-star restaurant exactly where food stuff is well prepared by incorporating desert fauna and flavors, earning the gastronomy an working experience in and of by itself.
Be shocked on day by day desert excursions
Luxurious lodges in Atacama offer you any range of routines to preserve you occupied through the working day and night.
Comprehensive-service luxurious Atacama lodges provide functions for exploration in the bordering desert. Visitors can go on everyday excursions with professional guides or can just kick back beside terrace hearth pits and lounge future to a pool with some of the very best desert views and the amazing sight of the Licancabur Volcano in the length.
These luxury lodges focus in tailor-manufactured activities in modest teams as effectively as more personal excursions with guides for each individual guest. This lets for privacy, serenity, and deep peace.
These outings variety from driving excursions to Altiplano lagoons, horseback using, hiking as a result of breathtaking landscapes, traveling to scorching springs, mountain biking, and discovering archaeological ruins. These excursions assortment from fifty percent-a-day to complete-day, and these consist of anything from straightforward hikes to a lot more complicated climbs, with a wide range of every day alternatives from which you – the visitor – can select. With above 40 explorations made available on foot, bike, or horseback, you are bound to find the purely natural gems of the Atacama Desert.
Discover the intricacies of dwelling Inca record and tradition
Far from getting inert stretches of rock and sand, the Atacama Desert is an region abundant in strength many thanks to its welcoming ancestral cultures and the oases that are a resource of everyday living in the driest desert in the entire world.
Climb the much more than 4,000 meters higher of the Andean plateau to learn tiny towns that hold their customs intact amid severe situations that are truly worth photographing. Find out the Pucará de Quitor, a 12th-century pre-Incan fort that clings to a steep slope or the region’s oldest village of Tulor, approximated to have been built about 800 B.C.
And of class there is San Pedro de Atacama. A travelers’ hotspot, San Pedro was the cradle of the Atacama men and women, the creators of the San Pedro Society, which created in the region a lot more than 11,000 several years ago. In the earlier, it was a sacred position for the Inca Empire as the Incas would have out religious ceremonies to worship the sun through the zenith of their energy. Nonetheless today, the city is a center of various crafts created according to the people’s common religion. Handed down from generation to technology, the locals have techniques in generating pottery, wooden engravings, basketry, musical instruments, apparel, ornaments, and weaving are some of the most attractive artifacts you will ever discover.
Even the food items scene is artisan-crafted, with chefs and house owners developing foods from indigenous crops grown only in the desert to create Andean fusion dishes. From quinoa salads, artisan pizzas, and home made empanadas with exclusive substances, to refreshing juices and smoothies built from things like kiwi and coca leaves, you are going to be pleasantly amazed at each and every meal.
Atacama beckons
Having said that you pick out to expend your time when in the Atacama Desert, it will be both momentous and unforgettable all at the exact time. The organic energy of the factors tends to make Atacama an suitable location for meditation. The hanging silence and the warm desert breezes give mystical solutions to your deepest queries. Included to this is the huge emptiness that makes it possible for your head to re-buy its ideas and carry peace to an otherwise extremely extreme daily life. The amazingly obvious evening skies permit you to comprehend your small portion of the huge universe. Pondering infinity is humbling and superior for the soul. Feeling the isolation, ponder and magic that fill the air though in these large-Andean plains, anything which can only be knowledgeable to start with-hand!
Alfonso Tandazo
Alfonso Tandazo is President and CEO at Surtrek Tour Operator. Surtrek Tour Operator is a effectively-set up company, specializing in tailor made-intended luxurious excursions in Ecuador, the Galapagos and throughout the rest of South The us. If you would like to be a guest blogger on A Luxury Travel Blog in buy to increase your profile, be sure to call us.
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