South America: Ep 04 - Atacama Desert

Today we had a very early start with an airport transfer at 04:30am. We made our way to the bag drop and cleared security ready for a flight at 7am to Calama in Northern Chile. Everything was on schedule and the flight took around 2 hours total.

Once we had collected our luggage we met on the new coach waiting for us outside the airport terminal. This would take us to San Pedro de Atacama and would be a 90 minute drive, with a 10 minute photo stop along the way.

Views of a volcano on the drive to San Pedro de Atacama.

We would arrive in San Pedro de Atacama just before 11am, and as it was too early to check-in we left our luggage in storage and went for an early lunch in the town.
After a brief walk we were told to meet back at the hotel at 2pm to collect the room keys from reception. This gave us plenty of free time to explore the local area and get our bearings.

A church in San Pedro de Atacama.

The next thing on the itinerary was a 4 hour excursion to the Moon Valley, meeting at 3pm. This was however cancelled due to a thunderstorm in the area, as it was deemed too dangerous to be in the middle of the desert at the time.
As the afternoon went on however, the thunder could be heard in the distance but no rain came. So we were a little disappointed to have missed an activity, only to see the sun come back out an hour later. So instead I did some further exploring in the evening, but the options were limited as it was such a small place near the hotel. The only thing left to do was get some dinner and rest up for the night.

A video of this day can be found below: