San Pedro de Atacama

San Pedro sits at 2,400 metres on an oasis where the San Pedro river reaches the salar, and it has been occupied for thousands of years - the Atacameño or Likan Antai people farmed here long before the Inca road system passed through and long before the Spanish. The town today is low adobe walls, unpaved streets kept that way deliberately, and a dense concentration of tour agencies, hostels and restaurants serving the geysers, lagoons and valleys around it. Water is the constraint on all of it: tourism, agriculture and the lithium industry draw on the same limited aquifer, and the argument over that is the town's real subject.

History

San Pedro grew over centuries around an oasis on the Puna de Atacama, and its first inhabitants, the Atacameños, developed the basketwork and pottery still sold in the town; how closely they were tied to the Tiwanaku culture is debated. After independence the oasis was Bolivian, and when the Atacama Province was created in 1829 it lost its old role as regional capital to the port of Cobija; the government of Andrés de Santa Cruz encouraged alfalfa growing here to feed the animals of travellers between the Altiplano and the coast, and the town became Chilean during the War of the Pacific (Wikipedia, San Pedro de Atacama).

Highlights

• An adobe oasis town - unpaved streets kept unpaved on purpose.
• Atacameño ground - occupied for thousands of years before the Inca.
• The base for the whole circuit - geysers, lagoons, valleys and salt flats.
• A water argument underneath - tourism, farming and lithium on one aquifer.

When to go

Year round; winter nights fall well below freezing at 2,400 metres. Several days.

What to expect

Prices are high for Chile and rise further in season. Altitude affects some people even here, before anything higher. Almost everything is sold as a tour. The town is small and can feel saturated in peak months.

Nearby

Valle de la Luna is west; El Tatio and Puritama are north.

Key facts