This day trip out of San Pedro de Atacama was our wildlife day. We visited several lagoons, which held wading birds like flamingos, gulls, sandpipers, plovers, and some unique water birds. We also managed to spot the rarely seen Suri (Darwin’s Rhea). We saw six in total, though two could have been a repeat, as […]

The waterproof GoPro came in handy at Puritama. It also made for a more fun experience, as it encouraged us to be silly and try stunts in the pools, rather than just hang out soaking up the cold fresh water and sun rays. And this slo-mo video.

We spent a lot of time swimming or in water in the Atacama desert. This was unexpected. We hadn’t done much research on our trip, having paid an adventure travel outfitter to organize the week in Atacama. We assumed it would be a mostly dry experience, but some of the most fun we had was […]

Pulled some still photographs out of the YouTube videos from our time at Termas de Puritama, including from time spent in the air pocket behind the waterfall.

Our first excursion with our guide in San Pedro de Atacama was a hike through a trail in Valle de la Luna, Valley of the Moon. We not only viewed the dramatic rocky landscapes, but also a large sand dune. The kids of course wanted to sand board, recalling their experience sledding sand at Great […]

We left San Pedro de Atacama for the salt lagoons in the middle of the desert. These salt flats and water holes require over an hour rumbling down a rough dirt road. As our Chilean driver said, the lagoons are a dream, the road is a nightmare. We popped a tire on the way to […]

Our guides arranged for us to use a public observatory near San Pedro for an astronomy tour. Our guide, Jared, was highly knowledgeable about the night skies. He was also knowledgeable about telescopes, which were large (16 and 18 inches in diameter), and gave us a view of planets and stars as we’ve never seen […]

Chile has the third largest geyser field in the world, El Tatio, behind Yellowstone at #1 and some place in Russia coming in at #2. We woke the family at 4:30am to be ready for the 5:30am pickup time. The guides drove us about 90 minutes outside of San Pedro de Atacama to the geysers. […]

One our way to visit the geyser region at El Tatio, we stopped at a lagoon at about 13,000 ft to view the flamingos that live there. I had always thought flamingos lived in tropical regions, closer to oceans and marshes, though flamingos live and thrive in this area of the Andes Mountains. There are […]