An Atacama Itinerary, One to Five Days

Every Atacama itinerary you will read organises itself around the map. This one organises itself around altitude, because that is what actually decides whether the days work.

The rule is simple: low first, high later. San Pedro is at 2,407 m. El Tatio is at 4,320 m. Two nights in between makes the difference between a memorable morning and a headache at sunrise.

One day

You will see one thing, and it should be Valle de la Luna in the late afternoon. It is 13 km from town, it is at roughly town height, and the sunset over the Cordillera de la Sal is the image people come back with.

Do not attempt El Tatio on a single day. You will arrive from Calama, sleep badly, get up at 4:30 a.m. and go to 4,320 m without any adjustment at all. It is the most common mistake made in this town.

Two days

Valle de la Luna on the first afternoon. On the second, either the salt lagoons at Cejar — the only place you get in the water — or sandboarding in Valle de la Muerte, which is the highest-rated thing the partner sells here.

Still no high-altitude day. Two days is a stopover, not a visit.

Three days — the honest minimum

Day one: arrive, Valle de la Luna in the afternoon. Day two: the salt lagoons or sandboarding. Both at or below town height. Day three: El Tatio at 4,320 m, leaving at 4:30 a.m., with two nights of adjustment behind you.

Three days is where the Atacama starts working, and the reason is entirely physiological.

Four days

Add the altiplanic lagoons and Piedras Rojas — ten hours, 4,140 m, and the best full day in the region. It goes on day four, after El Tatio rather than before, because by then the altitude is a known quantity.

Fit stargazing onto whichever night the moon is weakest. It is a two-and-a-half-hour evening, so it costs you no daylight at all and can share a day with anything.

Five days

Now you have room for Rainbow Valley, which is the excursion every three-day itinerary drops, and which is consequently the only one where you will not queue for a viewpoint.

Five days is also the point at which doing nothing for an afternoon becomes reasonable. San Pedro is a small adobe town with a good archaeological museum and a plaza with shade, and at 2,400 m an afternoon of not driving anywhere has more value than it sounds.

Longer, and Bolivia

The three-day crossing to Uyuni is not an add-on, it is a separate trip. It sleeps two nights above 4,000 m, requires a passport, and ends in another country. If you are doing it, it goes at the end of the Atacama week, never at the start, and your onward flight leaves from Uyuni rather than Calama.

The shortcut

If sequencing four bookings yourself sounds like work, one package in this inventory already does it in the right order — four excursions across three days with the high day placed last. It is the Best of Atacama combination, and the sequencing is the reason it is on this site rather than the price.

What to book, and when

Everything except two things can be booked in town the day before, outside January, February and July. The exceptions: the Valle de la Luna ticket must be bought at least a day ahead online and cannot be bought at the gate, and the Cejar admission closes twelve hours before departure.

Start from the full list of tours, and put the low ones first.