If you go all the way to Chile, you’ll probably be tempted to visit San Pedro de Atacama. All the guidebooks mention it, you’ll probably find lots of travel blogs talking about it and it seems like a pretty cool place from pictures. I am not sure I can recommend it. At least, I probably wouldn’t go back. There were some highlights for sure, but also it has the distinct feel of a place that was once beautiful but now is being over-touristed into oblivion. As with all such places, any positive superlatives that follow all have the implied suffix “for San Pedro” unless otherwise specified. For example, “a good selection of beers” should be read as “a good selection of beers for San Pedro”. If you really do want to go, I am sure three nights is enough time.
Because nothing here really belongs in the “Don’t Miss” category (except maybe for sandboarding), for this post we will just have a list of things we tried and whether we would recommned them to you or not.
What to do (and what not to do)
Sandboard San Pedro – https://www.sandboard.cl/
Let me just say this is a brutal workout if you really do it. There are no lifts; you earn your turns on the sand dunes and walking up a sand dune at 10,000 feet above sea level will basically make your lungs and legs want to explode. That being said it was awesome and for me totally worth it. I am not a snowboarder so I was really just learning the whole time but it was totally rad. If I were are an accomplished snowboarder I bet it would have been even cooler. Plus our guide, Nacho (real name Ignacio Luis), was a total blast and spoke English quite well, possibly better than anyone else we met during our time in Chile. He was such a board bro but I loved it. If you are up for the workout I can’t recommend this one highly enough. Fyi you will get sand everywhere. I still think it’s worth it.
Franchuteria – https://goo.gl/maps/QrpfnkqDjQ4QybHT7
In the pre-trip planning document, Bryn wrote a note next to this place, “Sandwich to go for the airport?” which turned out to be maybe the best idea in the history of ideas. (OK maybe that’s a lot but you know what I mean.) But also! This is is not just a place to get a great sandwich to go. They are open early and multiple mornings when we had a tour pickup at 7:00a (way before our hotel started serving breakfast), we got some legit, fresh-out-of-the-oven croissants at this place and felt really smug about ourselves for hours afterward. If you are there at a normal hour and the croissants didn’t just come out of the oven, they will warm them up for you if you ask nicely (probably in Spanish ; ) The bread here is also legit, so if you are staying in an Airbnb or for some reason find yourself leading an early morning tour and would like to give your guests a breakfast they’ll remember, you should check this place out. If you are not a professional tour guide and just want to hang out, they have a really pretty terrace for al fresco dining. The coffee is unmemorable, but that’s actually kind of a rave review for San Pedro coffee.
Baltinache Restaurant – https://goo.gl/maps/HGtLrJy1xweWVuTi7
Definitely the best food we ate in San Pedro. I particularly loved the guanaco (!) stew and the desserts, one of which had a chañar (local stone fruit) mousse and the other was a baked apple on top of quinoa cream (kind of like horchata I think but with quinoa instead of rice). The food was really good! It’s expensive but worth it given the alternatives in this place. My only complaint is the wine list is super weak. If they step up their wine/cocktail selection this place could be San Pedro’s first “Don’t Miss” destination ; )
Adobe Restaurant – https://goo.gl/maps/fV1SpH9RQpCSCbTj7
Some of the pictures on Google Maps make this place look wack, but if you skip the pizzas and quesadillas (because, seriously?) and don’t look too closely at the prices, this place is easily #1 or #2 in San Pedro de Atacama (Baltinache’s food is probably slightly better but Adobe’s wine list is light years ahead and sometimes you just want a fried egg on top of a steak on top of fries for dinner.) It gets busy though so either go early or make a reservation.
[Possibly] Pulperia Atacama – https://goo.gl/maps/ACJQDcT6J1VBbPta6
I don’t normally like to include places in these lists that we didn’t actually visit, but I’ll make an exception here because (a) the food scene in San Pedro kind of sucks and (b) I’m pretty sure this place would be in the top 3 just based on hearsay and google sleuthing alone. It’s closed on Sundays though (which is the reason we didn’t get a chance to try it) so if you want to check it out make sure you plan ahead.
Roots Cafe – https://goo.gl/maps/1d7CA6cZ9MDEv9yv5
A good selection of craft beer and an excellent green salad–which, depending on how long you have been in Chile, you might desperately need. Also a solid completo (hot dog with more avocado and mayonnaise than seems appropriate) and a pretty good ropa vieja sandwich which Bryn correctly described as a Chilean cheesesteak. Skip the coffee though, it’s legitimately bad.
Babalu Ice Cream – https://goo.gl/maps/La1pYZccHL5ka4fh8, among other locations
Somehow there are three locations of this ice cream shop all along the main pedestrian street in town (Caracoles) which is like a 5-minute walk MAX form one end to the other. Anyway, the ice cream is fine, nothing that will change your life, but the flavors are cool. Lots of local flavors like pisco sour and flor del desierto. It’s ice cream, who doesn’t like ice cream?
Chile Infinito Wine Shop – https://goo.gl/maps/hATvLy1g74nid3E67
The hours on Google Maps are definitely wrong, at least as of September 2023, but I have no idea what the right hours are. The one time we managed to find it open, we did find a decent selection of wines including some smaller producers and interesting wines. If you are staying in an Airbnb or just want to get takeout for some reason, picking up a bottle of Chilean Semillon (or something) could be a cool thing to do ; )
Laguna Chaxa – https://goo.gl/maps/gD7QFBmVGdb55rdG7
We did this as part of the Piedras Rojas and Lagunas Altiplanicas tour below. We could not find a tour that only offered the flamingo lake but not the rest of the dopey stuff. If you can, I would recommend it. I think you can also go there by yourself if you have a car (or a private driver/tour). The flamingoes were really cool and totally majestic (in a goofy kind of way) when they fly. The flamingoes was the only part of the tour worth doing, but I have to say it did help to have a tour guide in this case because he shared some basic knowledge of the flamingo life cycle that we didn’t have which made the experience that much more interesting.
Silvana Sutar – https://goo.gl/maps/9oXXwsWyE9qCEWxs5
Really nice little jewelery shop on Caracoles with everything handmade on a small scale. Bryn bought a cool silver ring with a very cool malvilla flower design. The woman manning the shop (she wasn’t the owner, though the owner is apparently sometimes present in the shop making the jewelery) spoke decent English. Definitely worth a look around, very nice stuff for reasonable prices.
Boutique Femme – https://goo.gl/maps/NbZZnqgLa73tU5RRA
Small shop filled with various products (ceramics, chocolates, jewelery, etc.) hand made on a small scale by women-led businesses. A nice place to look around for a few minutes (which of course makes it one of the most interesting shops in Sand Pedro).
Emporio Andino – https://goo.gl/maps/JX4LfyFK8zH3i1Lg9
In fairness to them, we (unknoiwngly at the time) wandered in right before their siesta closing time, but if they wanted to be closed they could have just said that. It wold have been better than grumpily making a terrible coffee. I would not recommend it based on my small sample size of experiences, but the empanadas and cakes looked pretty solid (and there is like nothing else to do in San Pedro) so I wouldn’t fault you if you don’t take my advice.
Las Delicias del Carmen – https://goo.gl/maps/cpyuWxXboqDkagCs6
I wanted to try some local food and one of our tour guides (whose tastes I trusted) told us this is a place to get it. I have to say though, it was quite disappointing. They were out of the Cazuela stew that I really wanted, and the food items that we did order were enormous portions without any warning from the server. The pastel del choclo was fine, but who wants that much corn casserole? And the oven roasted pork leg was a literal entire leg of pig which was not cooked well–tough and chewy indicative of having been cooked too quickly at too high a temperature. The beer selection was weak as well, just a couple of lagers available. I cannot recommend this place; there are better places to eat in San Pedro.
Piedras Rojas and Lagunas Altiplanicas tour – https://welovechile.com.br/conheca-os-nossos-passeios/deserto-do-atacama/
We booked this tour through some tour aggregator called Get Your Guide, and we were quite surprised to find that everyone else on our tour was Brazilian, but in hindsight the actual tour operator is clearly a Brazilian company (based on their website) so it kind of makes sense. The tour was offered in English, and the tour guide was a nice guy but overall it just wasn’t a very exciting tour. There was a lot of annoying people taking annoying photos, obviously more concerned with posting on Insta than actually learning anything.
Valle de la Luna sunset tour – https://turismolayana.cl/
We also booked this tour through Get Your Guide and again we were the only English speakers on the tour. This tour was even less informative than the Piedras Rojas tour above. The vaunted sunset over the Valley of the Moon was nothing special to my mind. If you’ve seen a desert sunset I think you can skip this one. The lady guiding it was nice and I felt bad that she had to say everything twice just for us but overall it was just a giant waste of time.
Stargazing tour – https://www.feelatacama.com/
Another tour booked through Get Your Guide, another tour where we were the only English speakers in a van full of Brazilians. That said, the guide was great. She actually spoke better English than Brazilian and she was clearly passionate about astronomy and since the Brazilians were clearly not passionate about it (unless they could post it on social media), she seemed to be more interested in talking to us about the constellations and showing us some cool stuff in the telescope (including Saturn!) than anything else. I would recommend this tour for sure.
Where to stay
There are tons of hotels/hostels/etc in San Pedro at literally all conceivable price points. The choice can feel overwhelming for sure. If you stay near the main tourist pedestrian street called Caracoles, you’ll set yourself up for success as far as walking to all the places above/any tours that for some reason won’t pick you up or drop you off at your hotel. We stayed at a place called Hotel Desertica (https://goo.gl/maps/vntxex1eRzXn1dpSA), which was in the middle of the road price-wise (around $260/night in September 2023). The rooms were nice, the service was great, the breakfast was fine, the coffee was terrible (what else is new). We can recommend it but also if you feel like the price is higher than it should be I would definitely encourage checking out other places; it was not a be-all and end-all destination hotel.
Some things to note
In the winter (when we visited), the prevailing weather pattern is calm in the monring and pretty windy (sometimes extremely windy) in the afternoon. My understanding from talking to tour guides and others is that it is the opposite in the summer (windy in the morning and calm in the afternoon). You may want to take this into account for when to fly in/out and when to book certain tours or visit certain sites (for instance, sandboarding is apparently no bueno when it’s windy).
The town itself is pretty boring. I doubt you would find enough outside of meals to keep you busy for more than an hour or two total. As you can see, I think many of the excursions are a waste of time. Perhaps worst of all, there is no good coffee in San Pedro. Literally, none. So you can’t even just pass the time at a cool place drinking good coffee. That’s why I’m not sure I can recommend it as a destination.