The main purpose for visiting Chile was to take Milky Way pictures in the Atacama Desert. To get to the small town of San Pedro de Atacama (pop: 6,000, elevation: 7,900ft) in the Atacama Desert, we did the following:

• drove to the Phoenix airport from Tucson (90 min)

• flew from Phoenix to LAX (90 min)

• flew from LAX to Santiago, Chile (10h 40m)

• flew from Santiago to Calama, Chile (2h 10m)

• drove from Calama in our rental car to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile (90 min)

• plus tons of time in airports

It was worth the effort getting to San Pedro as the house we rented was good, the food was great and the tours of the tourist spots were impressive. The only snag was that of the 5 nights that we were there, only the last night had clear skies to take pictures of the night skies.

We are in winter here with the highs in the low 70’s and a lot of snow as we travelled to sites at higher elevations (i13,000+ ft). One place we did not make it to, was the El Tatio Geysers as the road was closed due to snow. Also it was nice that there were no bugs here.

We had a tour guide (Patricio) that took on many of the tours and a few that we drove ourselves to. Below are pictures from the many tours that we were on at San Pedro.

On the road to Machuca, Chile (13,000 ft elevation)

The town of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Tour of Valle del Arcoiris (Rainbow Valley), Chile

Tour of Valle de Marde (Valley of Death), Chile

Tour of Vallecito (a desert valley in the Salt mountains), Chile

Tour of Rio Puritama (small river near San Pedro), Chile

Tour of Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon), Chile

Tour of the Catarpe Tunnel, Chile.

Standing on a high ridge outside of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile