Travel Secrets of the ATACAMA desert, Chile

[Music] there are a few places that simply have to be on your South American itinerary and the Atacama Desert is one of those is diverse landscape is a dream and its unique beauty cannot be underestimated but even though it is a popular well-known place getting there and getting around can cause you a bit of a headache in this video we will share our experience of traveling through the spectacular setting of the driest place on Earth before we begin we are marking asset and we are currently traveling through South America and as you will know if you have watched our previous videos we are making our way back up the continent after spending some time down south in Patagonia after spending a few days exploring Chile's capital of Santiago which we'll talk about in another video it was time to make the journey north towards the Bolivian border to a place called San Pedro de Atacama the small town on the edge of the Atacama Desert that we would use as a base for our adventures around this amazing region as always there are a few different ways to get there one option is to take a very long bus Journey from Santiago but you mustn't underestimate the size of Chile it would take many many hours in a bus so in our opinion you should choose the second option fly from Santiago to Kalama airport and then take a transfer to San Pedro to add a camera from there the transfer took us right to our Airbnb and overall we found this route to be a very convenient way of getting to this remote corner of Chile uh what's next then oh yes how do we get around to see what all these buses about the best way to get around the Atacama Desert is definitely by car but finding something to rent is where the challenging part really started for us just like a problem we faced in Jordan when we tried to rent a car we couldn't book online because we don't have a credit card and that made finding an agency to run from frustrating to say the least eventually we found a company called rent a helix who just asked for a cash deposit of 700 000 Chilean pesos or the equivalent in Euro which was about 800 Euro now that we've found a way to rent a car as the name suggests the only vehicle they had available was this massive Toyota Helix and it was 100 years per day to rent we decided to bait the bullet and go for it as this adventure was very high on our bucket list before coming here but we must admit that it was a bit of an unwanted sting to the pocket and to add to our problems Mark had never driven a car bigger than his mom stay at the Oris never driven a manual right hand drive car never driven on the right hand side of the road and certainly never driven anything quite like this month just a tiny car it's a boss nevertheless fortune favors the brave and we were on the road albeit very anxiously if you don't fancy around the car there are plenty of day trips to all the attractions but as we find overall in Chile they can be quite pricey if like us you have planned on visiting lots of places when you're here renting a car will definitely work out to be the cheaper option the worst thing is that even if you pay for one of these overpriced tours you still have to pay the admission fee to all the attractions on top of the overpriced fee that you actually pay for the tour so for us no thanks on day one we headed south and our first stop was magical Lake Jackson a stunning picturesque Salt Lake surrounded by towering active volcanoes and inhabited by a flamboyance of Pink Flamingos searching for breakfast strangely enough flamingos like salt water even though it's not good for them and in this Pond here you can see little tiny shrimps and I think that's what they'd be digging for when they're digging into the water we've had some food we could see flamingos really close and it's really really peaceful here the reflection is so so perfect so it looks like a mirror actually the color of flamingos depends on what they eat so one of them are very pink because they eat something different and some of them are more white because they eat something different and it's funny how they walk and try to eat like a Hoovers you know chili is a real hot spot for active volcanoes there are only just over a thousand active volcanoes in the world and 150 of them are in Chile making it about 10 percent of all active volcanoes are here in Chile this woman you can see behind me is called the last car volcano it is the biggest and most active volcano in Northern Chile and it has had about 30 massive eruptions in the last 150 years as we left early in the morning we found ourselves here completely alone and really we're able to take in our surroundings there is something so peaceful about watching the movements of flamingos and to see them in this setting gave us a moment to really cherish there is one thing we didn't really expect when we originally planned on driving through the Atacama Desert and that was how unbelievably Scenic the road would be we find it hard not to stop every 10 minutes just to pause and take a look at the ever-changing landscapes for this reason renting a vehicle is definitely our recommendation when coming here it is so liberating to be able to stop wherever you want and take in the jaw-dropping surroundings around every corner just a wee break from the video for a minute we work hard on these videos and we realized on YouTube that only two percent of the people that watch our videos are actually subscribed to our channel so if you're enjoying this video and you're not subscribed can you please just click the red button here it would mean a lot to us and it would really help with the growth of our channel the next stops on our itinerary requires some pre-booking which to be honest we thought to be a bit silly and outdated we nearly got caught out here we wanted to go to lagunas miscanti and the seller de Aguas Calientes sir anyway we only found out late last night that you actually need to buy a ticket online and get this QR code and then stop at this little village on the way called soccer and they will print this for you and it's your ticket to enter both of those lagoons um it cost us 15 000 each for both places online but you could get caught out here because there's no internet here and if you didn't buy it online apparently they don't issue a ticket when you get here it's like 100 kilometers from San Pedro to other camera you could easily get caught out without having bought a ticket so definitely be aware of that thing that's annoying about it is that you have to reserve a specific time so we pick o'clock not not having a notion what time would be able to get here by because the roads are long and awkward and we arrived here at about 20 past 11 and now we have to wait until one o'clock so yeah not ideal at all apparently it's covered restrictions and then there's no soap in the toilet makes sense anyway on a more positive note we were actually able to enter early so it wasn't quite as strict as we thought it might be the road to Laguna mescanti and miniqueers was up there with the very worst roads I've ever seen in my life but luckily it was only this rough for a few kilometers before you reached the lagunas first Laguna you come to is miscanti a gorgeous Salt Lake with Incredible views of the iperia and minikes volcanoes just up the road from that list me against Laguna which once again is at the foot of some more volcanoes and inhabited by a few dozens of these vikunias both of these Lakes actually used to be so flat but an eruption of a surrounding volcano around a thousand years ago blocked the water streams and the area was left with these two beautiful lakes although the Atacama is known to be the driest place on Earth something peculiar happens when we were at this particular Laguna rain we seen dark clouds and Asia was adamant that it wasn't going to rain and I said those are rain clouds and I told her an Irishman that was around and he sees one here we are I'm the driest person on Earth with the lowest precipitation levels anywhere on this planet the rain turned out to only be a short shower and after maneuvering our way back down that bumpy bumpy road we headed for our last stop of the day Piedras Rojas Valley the drive there was stunning we encountered some more wildlife and we were once again mesmerized at the site of the surrounding volcanoes Piedras Rojas was a spectacular place to end the Desai scene [Music] black volcanoes overlooked this beautiful Green Lake and as you walk on the volcanic rock down to the lake you can't help but paint all of this unique landscape this place was something we had never seen before [Music] it was then time to drive all the way back to San Pedro which was around 160 kilometers back up the road apart from those bumpy roads to the lagunas the roads here were actually in much better condition than we expected especially this main road that took us all the way back to San Pedro in just under two hours it's not a long drive but we were stunned at how often the landscape changed in just 160 kilometers looking back at day one of our Atacama Adventure it was a bit surreal to think that all these photos were taken within a few hours of each other we Now understand the reason this place is so highly thought of and we couldn't wait to see what they too had in store after a well-owned rest we once again set off on the road but this time we kept it quite local just 10 minutes from San Pedro you can find this incredible Viewpoint of Valle de la Luna or Moon Valley in English [Music] this place is as the name suggests otherworldly so much so that NASA have actually been known to use parts of the Atacama to test their Mars rovers they say it's the perfect location to trial instruments NASA plans to use on Mars since it is as dry as the red planet and under constant assault from ultraviolet radiation as we have skipped schedule to leave our rental monster back to the agency that evening we headed back to San Pedro and decided to book a tour for the next day that would take us over the Bolivian border to explore the area's gazers Salt Flats and more but that's it for another video but there is one place in the common desert that we would really would have liked to have seen which is called Laguna baltanasia but when we were renting car they said that if you go there and something happens they will not return a deposit to us and before going there I was also reading a Blog and my photographer said that he has seen three cars there with the flat tires which is obviously horrendous experience and apparently the road there is absolutely awful so we just decided not to go there if you want to experience this dead sea floating Lake you can go to Laguna sehar but we didn't go there because we've been to the Dead Sea just this summer and we still have to pay for admission fee and petrol so we decided to skip it but if you've never been to the zc I think it's a great option so so overall the two days we spend in the outer camera were worth the stress and they were worth the expense of going here it really is an amazing place for a stress-free trip to the Atacama we have put together seven points that we would have liked to have known about before committing to this trip tip number one there's not a lot of information online but fly from Santiago to Kalama and then take a transfer from Kalama to San Pedro tip number two pre-book a rental vehicle with your credit card online and pick it up in San Pedro not Kalama not Kalama airport tip number three don't book a return transfer to Kalama from San Pedro because you should definitely take the three-day tour into Bolivia that we'll talk about in our next video tip number four take US dollars they love US dollars here because its value is more consistent than the local currency and you can book your tours way cheaper by using US dollars for example as we said before we booked our tour to Bolivia in San Pedro and we saved 100 dollars because we just booked booked it with US dollars in cash bring bring US dollars so this was a tip in our last video about Patagonia I hope you watched that tip number five is to book an Airbnb with a kitchen because you're in Chile and eating out is just not worth it it's just not worth it just don't just buy food and cook tip number six bring Chilean pesos when you go to the attractions because you need to pay entrance and they do not accept cards and there are of course no ATMs in the desert and bonus 6.1 tip exchange your money do not withdraw it because we didn't find any ATM that wouldn't charge you around 10 USD for just withdrawing your cash and you can't withdraw more than 200 000 which is around 200 so just again bring cash and exchange it will work out way cheaper trust us number seven uh don't forget to pre-book your trip to Laguna mescanti and Luna minicas even though as I said before we think this is a really silly thing you still have to do it otherwise you'll be turned away so don't forget to do that we just the night before and it was pretty convenient so do that and you arrive at a town called soccer and they let you through so overall uh was the Atacama Desert difficult to get to yes and did we go slightly maybe a lot over budget to come here absolutely but to be fair this place is absolutely stunning and in the two days we spent driving around we've seen some amazing places probably places that we'll never see again in our life so do you think it was worth it absolutely yes I'm really glad it's been in my packages for a long time and I'm really glad we've done it and we're going to be producing more and more videos about South America our channel is the perfect place to find all the guys you need and if you go to Atacama to this amazing place we are positive you're going to have something to remember just like us [Music]

Channel: Something To Remember

Views: 29,080

Keywords: atacama, Chile, atacama desert, northern Chile, how to travel atacama, atacama road trip, driest place on earth, atacama travel, travel tips, travel secrets, travel guide, Chile travel, salt lakes, salt flats, laguna miscanti, laguna miniques, piedras rojas, Chile wild life, Chile volcanoes, driest desert, desert road trip, San Pedro de Atacama, calama, Bolivia, Car Rental Atacama Hilux

Id: rK60plduM7M

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 08 2023