San Pedro de Atacama

Off the cruise and we take a bus to the Airport in Santiago, then a plane to Calama, the gateway to San Pedro de Atacama.  

We had about 6 hours to kill at the airport, but Andre snagged a ticket change for free to get us off an hour earlier.  Very excited to get an extra hour, until we boarded the plane.

First announcement, technicians need 30 minutes.  Second announcement 45 minutes later they need another 30 minutes.  Another 45 minutes later (after our original plane has left) announcement can't be fixed, need to switch planes and will leave in a 1.5 hours.  So, turns into midnight arrival at our hotel, and an early tour the next day.  

It is about 1.5 hours from Calama to San Pedro de Atacama, which we did in the dark.  A bit of a mix up at the airport as they were expecting us on the original flight, but we got that all sorted and off we go.

Arrival at the hotel and what I guess is the security guard is there to check us in.  No English, but a translator on his phone.  Off to our room, surprised at the size as I know I booked the cheapest room I could find here and it was not supposed to look like this.  Start getting settled for the night and a knock on the door, he put us in the wrong room.  Gather up our things again and off we go to our "real" room.  The poor guy showed me his phone, he is new and said he was very nervous.  I knew he was new when he had no idea how to work the credit card machine, I just said Manana (very limited spanish!) and we are good, I will look after the payment tomorrow.

Drive from San Antonio Chile port to Santiago airport

At  airport

Domestic airport in Santiago

San Pedro de Atacama - the town is made up of dirt roads.  A couple of pedestrian streets only. This is outside our hotel Don Raul, which is right at the end of one of the pedestrian streets, a fantastic location. 

So many dogs wandering around.  

You get very dirty and dusty walking the streets

Busy streets at night.  During the day most people are out on tours

Our hotel.  Very basic, Not even sure if it included breakfast, we were gone every day before the restaurant opened

Pool at our hotel, never saw anyone using it

Dogs could open the swing door into the hotel, they were often found resting in the lobby couches.