Altitude Acclimatisation in the Atacama Desert

In northern Chile we spent some time acclimatising to the altitude in San Pedro de Atacama. We had a few days to explore the interesting landscapes of the Atacama desert, our last destination in Chile before crossing into Bolivia.

Fjords, glaciers and mountains to vast, baron desert lands

Chile is one of the longest countries in the world at 4,300km from top to bottom. We spent 2 full travel days getting from the south all the way to the north, which required 4 buses, 2 flights, a taxi and a lot of transit time.

We touched down to a very different dry and desert-like climate in Calama, north Chile. Based on recommendations, we only transited through Calama and went straight through to San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro de Atacama is situated at approx. 2,500m altitude and sits in the Atacama Desert.

The Atacama Desert

On our first day we caught up on sleep and admin. We also went to Roots Cafe and had our first real barista-made coffee of the trip. Bliss.

In the afternoon we hired bikes and rode through the Devil’s Throat, a 25km round trip from town. The area was very dry but provided some quite interesting landscapes and it was also great to get moving again after so much travel.

Apparently, the Atacama Desert is where NASA tests its Mars Rovers, as the area has the greatest resemblance to Mars.

Laura then managed to connect with some other travellers in the area to get together and rent a car to travel to all the attractions around San Pedro de Atacama. We met up with Dani (Portuguese), Jodi (UK) and Mat (French). Vibes were immaculate on first introductions over a beer and we secured ourselves a pretty sweet rental for the next 2 days. Given I was the only one with an international driver's license, that put me in the driver's seat, driving in rural Chile on the right-hand-side of the road - no worries.

On our first day we visited several lagunas including Laguna Miscanti, Piedras Rojas, Laguna Tuyaito and Laguna Burro Muerto. The landscapes were impressive with the volcanic red rocks and blue water, however the sights were not overly inspiring. We did get to spot some flamingos, whose pink colours were amazing. However, the company was great and we had a lot of fun.

On our second day, Jodi had already committed to other plans, so we invited along Matia (Italian) from our hostel, who was a great addition. We left at 4:30am to get up to the El Tatio Geysers. The roads were shockingly bad quality, all dirt, lots of potholes and covered in snow and ice. It was also dark and below zero. However, I felt right at home on the roads, just like the pre-dawn race up the ski field on any given weekend.

The El Tatio Geysers are the highest geysers in the world situated at 4,200m, so it was snowing at the top and pretty cold. We didn't hang around long, but did enjoy having a look around. We could definitely feel the altitude.

On our way back we stopped in at a cute wee mountain village for a coffee and llama kebab for breakfast - as you do in Chile. The llama kebab was cooked on a charcoal grill and coated in chimichurri sauce. It actually tasted delicious - just like lamb.

We stopped back in town to pick up our togs before heading to Laguna Piedra - a lagoon that you can float in, with a higher salt content than the Red Sea. This was our last stop of the Atacama Desert tour and by far our highlight of the last few days. The buoyancy of the water was incredible. You could float vertically without having to tread water. We were only allocated 20min of float time due to the salt density, but we all came out feeling very relaxed.

We dropped the car back in the evening, but not without narrowly avoiding an almost very-costly run in with the police. I parked the car back where we picked it up on a side street, but this was apparently a no-park zone. By pure luck, we were back at the car with the hire company when the police came past. The hire company manager was no help at all, spotting the police and backing away and offering no explanation. Thankfully, after Dani's patchy Spanish explanation, we managed to dodge a $250,000 Chilean Peso fine (NZD $445), which was double what we paid to rent the car, and the police moved on. Phew.

We then regrouped with everyone, including Jodi from the day before for happy hour in town. We ended up at a local bar which the interior was covered in graffiti, only played heavy metal rock and served 1.2L beer bottles for NZD $8. We were back at the hostel at a semi-reasonable hour, in preparation for our early start the next day.

The start of our journey from Chile overland to Bolivia

I would just like to start this section by voicing my absolute despise of the Chilean bureaucratic system. Our 3-day journey from Chile to Bolivia, overland in a 4WD truck via the Uyuni Salt Flats, turned out to be a 4.5 day saga (more in the next blog post).

We were advised we would be picked up from our hostel between 5 and 6am. Thinking this would likely be 6:30am or later due to the Latin American way of life of sleep ins and a general lack of haste, we had an abrupt wake up after receiving a message at 4:30am that our shuttle bus was 10min away. We were crammed into a mini van and driven around San Pedro de Atacama at an ungodly hour to collect the other passengers before pulling up into the carpark outside the customs (to exit Chile) just after 5am. We soon found out that customs didn't open until 8am, so we tried our best to sleep in the mini van that was, ironically, parked only 600m from our hostel and wait for customs to open so we could begin our journey to Bolivia.

The first step of getting to Bolivia was getting our passports stamped from customs in San Pedro de Atacama to exit Chile. This was, literally, a rubber stamp process. We waited outside the Chilean customs from 5am until midday, sitting in the dry desert heat with no communication or progress. We then received notification that the Bolivian border had, effective immediately, been closed and no one would be crossing that day. No rationale or explanation given. Great waste of a day, but in hindsight we had mentally prepared ourselves to expect these sorts of delays in South America.

We quickly secured a hostel for the night (hostels filled up rapidly and reached capacity very quickly due to the border closure and influx of visitors) with our tour group and then sought to reclaim what was left of the afternoon, rescheduling the overland tour for the next day. The rest of the afternoon was spent mucking about town in San Pedro de Atacama, including inspiring and convincing Fletcher to get a mullet and treating ourself to more barista-made coffee and pastries at a French bakery.

Astro-tour

Laura and I weren't originally going to do an astro-tour in San Pedro de Atacama as we were privileged with already enjoying one of the clearest night skies in the world back home in Tekapo. However, everyone else was going and for the sake of NZD $35 including a pisco scour cocktail, proper tour guide and telescopes we went along for the company.

Inevitably, the night sky wasn't as clear as Tekapo, but we did still get to see the milkyway and look at the various stars and clusters through the telescopes. Our asto-tour guide was also very knowledgeable and it was overall a great experience, made great by the banter with Dani, Jodi, Mat and Matia.

We were back at the hostel just before midnight, ready for our second attempt to exit Chile and cross the border into Bolivia.