The Atacama Desert was a special place and I hope this helps with your trip planning! If you have any specific questions, don't hesitate to drop a comment below! Before you go, if you found this helpful, drop a like on this video and subscribe with goaw.pl/AwesomeTube 😊
Great tips and wonderfull footage man! 3:28 Glad to know that they also are selling the tickets on the spot. I'm planning my trip to Atacama for September/October and the calendar on the website takes forever to load the available dates, and sometimes it doesn't load. And also I read some comments from other travellers saying that wasn't able to use their international credit card.
Ah that’s frustrating. Keep trying because I’d recommend having tickets beforehand otherwise there’s always the risk that they don’t sell tickets on the day of. We were there in the early days after they opened up and there was a lot of confusion. The website makes it sound like they don’t sell in-person but I do hope there’s some flexibility in that. Let me know what ends up happening!
You can certainly bring your own camera but I'd say it's almost set up more for Jorge to take photos. He takes photos for you and he sends it to you for free. That said, I wouldn't say it's very comprehensive. If you want to do more serious stuff on your own, you should let him know ahead of time or look for perhaps a photography-focused tour.
@@GoingAwesomePlaces it’s coming up in august! i couldn’t find any details on ticket information from google itself so your blog helped me a lot. i actually found you through some guys comment on trip advisor. your blog is seriously one of the most detailed ones out there - i especially love the summaries you put after each attraction for ease of lookup.
Really like your itinerary. A question, have you registered your drone with Chile authorities? I have a similar drone that I want to use but wandering about that. Appreciate any guidance :)
I wanted to but I couldn’t figure it out as it didn’t seem easy at all for foreigners. In the end locals just told me to fly it with my best discretion so that’s what I did. You don’t see any drone shots in Atacama because I tried to fly it the one time and landed it in sand which is a big no-no and the drone was unusable after that so be careful! There are multiple places with no-drone signs so basically just don’t be stupid and respect the rules if you see those signs.
Jorge's website for Atacama Desert Stargazing is: www.atacamadesertstargazing.com/. Let him know that I sent you. If you need more information as you go through your trip now, make sure to refer to our itinerary article here: goingawesomeplaces.com/6-day-san-pedro-de-atacama-itinerary-with-car-rental/
So 5 days is pretty close to the 6 days we spent in Atacama and I'd say it's pretty good to see/do most of everything from San Pedro de Atacama. Read our itinerary: goingawesomeplaces.com/6-day-san-pedro-de-atacama-itinerary-with-car-rental/ Now in terms of getting to Santiago, your best bet would be fly. The flight from Santiago to Calama is 2 hours and 8 minutes. We core this in our travel guide: goingawesomeplaces.com/san-pedro-de-atacama-travel-guide-chile/ Hope that helps!
Great video as always. Thanks for the tips on the tickets. The same thing happened to us in Cordoba last year. I will be solo traveling to Chile and Bolivia next month and cannot wait. Normally, I travel with my son and fellow anthropologist, Bear. We promote culture, nature and great foods while we travel around the world planting trees, cleaning beaches, eating amazing foods and running our mouths. If that sounds cool to you, lease chack it out. KKeep up the fun and adventures. - Turtle
Yes technically you could. We saw someone parked there and when we went to stargaze, we saw them camped in a covered area (old concrete structure). There aren’t a lot of spots but you could definitely make it happen.
Hi, thank you so much for this video. We are planning a trip there soon and had a question for you. What type of car did you rent? Specifically, was your car 2 wheel or 4 wheel drive? We’ve heard lots of mixed things about the roads there. How was the driving?
Hey! Check out our guide (goingawesomeplaces.com/san-pedro-de-atacama-travel-guide-chile/). To answer your question though, we rented a Nissan Kicks which is a 2WD crossover type of vehicle and honestly it was fine! The driving wasn't the easiest if I'm being honest but it was more about being confident with the roads and not stressing about worst-case scenarios. I think the hardest drive was probably out to Geyser del Tatio in the morning (in the dark) and going out to Lagunas Baltinache.
We rented from Europcar! The price was really good but the service at the counter was spotty as there was no one there when we landed and it took awhile for someone to show up. It seems like they’re only there at specific times. When dropping off, it was empty and so we just put our keys in the box. Check out our full itinerary here: goingawesomeplaces.com/6-day-san-pedro-de-atacama-itinerary-with-car-rental/
For multi-day treks, I've heard that you can backpack from San Pedro de Atacama to Rio Salado and Rio Grande, summit Soquete Volcano, over to El Tatio geysers and then back. I know that there's also the original Camino del Inca but I don't know how clearly marked it is or how continuous it is as well.