Atacama Desert
Access & Resources
Adventure on the Edge
THE SEASON: November through March, summer in the Southern Hemisphere, is prime time in Patagonia, including Torres del Paine and General Carrera Lake; the Atacama Desert is temperate year-round.
GETTING THERE: Chile is on eastern standard time, so if you fly from New York or Miami you won't suffer a whit of jet lag. LanChile (800-735-5526; http://www.lanchile.com), the national airline, offers flights from Miami, New York, and Los Angeles
starting at $915 round-trip.
GETTING AROUND: Renting cars and flying are usually the most efficient and cost-effective options. To get to Torres del Paine, LanChile offers flights to Punta Arenas, a 150-mile drive from the park, starting at $655 round-trip. For the Atacama Desert, two-hour-long flights from Santiago to Calama start at around
$460 round-trip. And to get to Terra Luna, Santiago-to-Balmaceda fares start at $460 round-trip. (Bonus: free Chilean cabernet sauvignon in flight.) When you land in Punta Arenas and Calama, you'll want to rent a four-wheel-drive vehicle. In Punta Arenas, call Hertz ($140 per day; 011-56-61-248742); in Calama, call Budget (56-55-341-076; $117
per day). In Balmaceda, arrange for transportation with Terra Luna Lodge.
OUTFITTERS: Sergio Echeverría, a safety-conscious former NOLS instructor and owner of Big Foot Expeditions (56-61-414611; explore@bigfootpatagonia.com) in Puerto Natales, offers climbing, camping, and sea-kayaking trips in Torres del
Paine and beyond for $55 to $150 per day. Outfitter Azimut 360 (56-67-431-263), which juggles more than 150 cycling, climbing, hiking, and trekking trips in Chile per year, prefers guests who are knowledgeable, experienced, and self-sufficient. Prices vary depending on the itinerary.
LODGING: In Torres del Paine National Park, the Hostería las Torres (doubles, $89 per night including breakfast; 56-61-246054) offers basic rooms with hot showers. A shared room in Refugio Grey (56-61-412-592), the rustic hut at the base of Grey Glacier, costs $12 per night. In San Pedro de Atacama,
Hostería la Casa de Don Tomás (doubles, $68 per night; 56-55-851055; http://www.rdc.cl/dontomas) has a private outdoor patio and is within walking distance of everything in town. En route to the Atacama Desert, the Hotel el Mirador in Calama (doubles, $60;
56-55-340329) has spotless, cheerful yellow rooms and an enclosed courtyard. At northern Patagonia's Terra Luna (56-67-431-263; t-luna@netline.cl), prices range from $60 to $150 per night, breakfast included. —S.G.
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I went to the Atacama Desert to get a taste for what life is like on Mars. Really. I had heard that it was so high, harsh, and dry—in some areas it hasn't rained in 15 years—that NASA tested its Nomad solo space explorer there. Its 50,000 square miles are marked by desert flats, volcanoes, and Chile's largest salt bed. I planned to test a few of
the higher trails to acclimatize for the steep scree slopes of Mount Licancabur, a 19,455-foot volcano that's long been held sacred by the region's indigenous Atacameñan people. The launching point for me and my Chilean guides, Luis Lopez Choque, 26, and Andy Marangunic, 31, of Santiago-based outfitter Azimut 360, was San Pedro de Atacama, a small
hippie-flavored tourist stop with rental mountain bikes propped up against 400-year-old adobe walls, located 700 miles north of Santiago. Azimut 360 operates 150 climbing, biking, horseback riding, and hiking expeditions in Chile each year, five of which are in the Atacama (see "Access & Resources," right).
Luis, Andy, and I set out on a series of trips, crisscrossing the desert in the heat of day (temperatures remain in the high seventies/low eighties year-round) and camping in the frigid cold at night (a makeshift hot water bottle and a Gore-Tex bivy sack saved me when it was five below). Though much of the area can be explored without a guide, you'd be
wise to hire one for more ambitious volcano treks. We went to Valle de la Luna, eight miles west of town, and hiked up a 300-foot ash dune to watch the sunset glow off the volcanoes in the east, and we saw pink flamingoes wading in the sulfury, crystallized sand bottoms of Laguna Chaxa, a salt lake 34 miles southwest of San Pedro. Always, Licancabur loomed,
visible from practically everywhere within a 200-mile radius of San Pedro de Atacama.
By the end of the week we had logged more than 700 miles in the aforementioned Toyota, and it was clearly on its last legs. We ran out of time for Licancabur—the ascent of which involves crossing into Bolivia—but it almost didn't matter.
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