4 DAY WORK TRIP // all work, no play
- Calama
- San Pedro de Atacama
- ALMA Observatory
- Valle de la Luna
- Cactus Valley
WHEN I WENT
December 2015
GETTING THERE
San Pedro de Atacama is accessible from El Loa Airport in Calama. Once you land, you’ll have to take a 90-minute drive to town, so it’s best to arrange a ride before you get there. We rented a car because we had to drive out to remote places, which was easy. You don’t need an international drivers license if you’re coming from the United States. Not sure about other countries.
STAY: Hotel Tulor
There aren’t a lot of cheap hotels in San Pedro de Atacama. Hotel Tulor is a nice, moderately priced hotel within a short walk to the center of town. The employees didn’t speak much English, so brush up on your Spanish. There isn’t a restaurant on site, but they do serve a full breakfast in the morning.
MUST DO: Stargazing, hiking and biking
There’s so much to see in San Pedro de Atacama. Because I was on a work trip to take photos overnight, I missed a lot of day trips.
But I got a rare experience under truly dark skies, which you can see in my article here. We hired the amazing photographer Nicholas Buer to take photos for us. So we spend three nights in the desert gazing at the galaxy.
PRO TIPS
Don’t lose your luggage. San Pedro de Atacama doesn’t have any typical clothing stores. You can only buy souvenirs and very expensive sports gear. I had to learn this the hard way, and spent a day walking around town looking like a dork.
Rent a truck if you really want to see the night sky. While the tours are great and better than anything you’ve probably ever seen, you have to stay out until after midnight to get the jaw-dropping show that everyone writes about. You’ll have to rent a truck at the airport in Calama and then drive into San Pedro yourself.
Learn Spanish. A lot of Chileans don’t speak English because, it seems, they don’t have to. Chile is an amazing, developed nation with plenty of tourist from neighboring countries. They don’t need to cater to English-speaking tourist.
The Chilean currency is in pesos. One dollar is about 655 pesos. Exchange some money in the airport, just to get around, but you’ll get a better rate in town.
CALAMA
SAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA
Who runs this town? Perros.
VALLE DE LA LUNA
We came out here to scout locations for our shoot. Valle de la Luna, or Valley of the Moon, is called that because it literally looks like the moon. Tourists like to bike through here and watch the sunset. They get kicked out once the sun goes down.
I filled out a literal ton of paperwork to get access of the park overnight with the permission of the indigenous people of Atacama and the National Forest Corporation. They provided a guide who stayed with us the whole time, and took us on a midnight hike with pitch black rock scrambles. NBD.
I’m almost sure that no one has taken photos there at night, at least not that I’ve seen. We got a lot of shots, but only ended up using one for the story.
ALMA OBSERVATORY
We were granted a visit to the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) to check out the world famous radio telescopes on the Chajnantor plateau. Its elevation is a whopping 5,000 meters (16,000 feet) high. Before our guide drove us up, we had to take a physical and were given an oxygen tank, which I ended up using at 4,000 meters on up.
CACTUS VALLEY
I can’t tell you exactly where Cactus Valley is. We drove an hour out of town on a few hours of sleep, and took a hike. There was a tour bus there during the day, so it must be part of a tour package. However, when we returned at night, there was no one there.
We were alone until about 2 a.m. when we heard voices in the dark. Imagine, you’re in this valley, an hour outside of town, away from any life. And you hear voices in a pitch black valley. Well, it was a guy giving a night tour to three amateur photographers. Whew! There is a huge cactus that is a big attraction.
This is an “easy” hike, but it’s pitch black out. I left a trail of glow sticks (which I picked up on my way back) to mark our route and car. If I didn’t do that, we would’ve been wandering around in the dark for a bit.
PRO TIP: Don’t bring anything shady on this hike. The road to Cactus Valley is known for having drug smugglers from Bolivia, so you may encounter a car check by the Chilean army. They’ll just ask you where you’re going, and say things in Spanish that you don’t understand. I just keep saying “San Pedro de Atacama” and “tourist.” They will let us go after going a visual inspection of the truck.
These photos do no justice, but I hope you get a better sense of the sights around San Pedro de Atacama.