San Pedro de Atacama

The San Pedro de Atacama region has been inhabited for thousands of years. Its heyday was around 1000 years ago when it was part of the Bolivian Tiwanaku culture – aspects of the sophisticated terraced faring developed at this time are still in evidence today. The Incas and Spanish came and went in due course, with San Pedro ending up as part of Bolivia until the late 19th century. Mining was the booming industry then: saltpetre and then copper and lithium throughout the past century.

Nearby Calama still has the flavour of a hard-bitten mining town; the green oasis of San Pedro de Atacama carries a more relaxed air that's made it a favourite with overland travellers and international tourists alike. Known by all as simply 'San Pedro', locals sometimes jokingly refer to it as 'San Perro' due to the large population of stray dogs (perro is the Spanish word for dog). 

San Pedro is a delightful place to explore on foot. The town's low walls and buildings are all made of brown or whitewashed adobe, and if you've freshly arrived from Santiago you get a sudden sense of travelling back in time. The main street of Caracoles is for pedestrians only and is lined with a traveller-friendly mix of restaurants, bars, mini-markets and tour operators.

Turning off Caracoles onto either Tocopilla or Toconao, takes you to the Plaza de Armas – the town's main square that is home to the gleaming white church, first established in the 16th Century.

Further from the centre – not far in such a small town – are the even quieter dusty back roads where you'll see the stronger influence of the indigenous Atacameños people. Look up at road junctions as the skyline volcanoes appear and disappear behind the buidings. 

There is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to choosing what to do from San Pedro. The majority of excursions into the Atacama Desert are half a day in length, making it easy to put together a tailored itinerary to match the length of your stay.

The closest excursions to San Pedro are to see the otherworldly landscapes of Vallecito and Moon Valley, or you can imagine yourself fully off-planet with a night of star gazing at one of the observatories on the outskirts of town. Many people come here just to watch the skies: San Pedro is a world leader when it comes to astrotourism.

Further afield, there are plenty of opportunities to hike, from soft adventure to longer walks. One of our favourites is the Guatin Canyon hike, where the desert starts to climb up into the mountains and the gorges are lined with almost cartoonish giant cacti. There's also interesting walking to be had among the technicolour rocks of Rainbow Valley to discover millennia-old petroglyphs.

For those with more time to acclimatise to the altitude, there's no better sight than the scaldingly explosive El Tatio Geysers, viewed in the freezing dawn of the altiplano.