Chile and San Pedro de Atacama, a town in the Atacama Desert.
San Pedro de Atacama is a town in the north of Chile. It is located in the Atacama Desert, one of the driest and loneliest landscapes on earth, and comprises several oasis villages. Spread over an area of 23,438 km², scattered in numerous small settlements, there are only 10,996 inhabitants.
From Lake Titicaca, we drive via Tacna (Peru), across the border to Arica, the northernmost city in Chile. Arica is located just a few kilometers from the border with Peru on the Pacific Ocean. We spend two days there before continuing on to San Pedro de Atacama.
San Pedro de Atacama is a town on a high plateau in the Andes in north-eastern Chile. The surrounding landscape includes deserts, salt pans, volcanoes, geysers and hot springs and is very impressive. Due to the dry air, the sky here is exceptionally clear.
In San Pedro de Atacama, we also book a tour lasting several days through the Valle de la Luna in the nearby Los Flamencos National Reserve. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, we cross the border into Bolivia and drive through the world's largest salt pan (more than 10,000 square kilometers), the Salar de Uyuni, to Uyuni.
If you are in Bolivia, visit the Salar de Uyuni. We have never seen anything like the huge, completely flat, white expanse of the salt lake on our travels so far.