After an incredible month in Peru, filled with mind-blowing food, culture, and people, we packed up our bags to head to our next country: Chile! We had a pretty brutal travel day ahead of us – catching a bus from Arequipa, Peru, to the Peruvian border town of Tacna, taking a collectivo across the border to the Chilean town of Arica, and then taking an overnight bus from Arica to San Pedro de Atacama, the home base of our next adventure: We would be renting a camper van to rip around the Atacama desert of Northern Chile!
We woke up at 5 am to pack up our bags and mentally prepare for the long travel day ahead. The buses in Peru are surprisingly comfortable, with big seats that recline and plenty of leg room.
We hopped on the bus and sat down in our assigned seats. The sun was absolutely glaring down on our side of the bus, blinding both of us, so we closed the curtain. The old lady behind us reached around and re-opened the curtains. We looked at her confused. She responded back in Spanish that she “wanted to see the view” and needed to keep the curtain open. We were flabbergasted… I cannot stress enough how ugly the “view” was. We were driving on a fenced in highway with nothing around. After a bit of back and forth, she finally reluctantly agreed to switch sides of the bus to see the “view” out the other side.
The rest of the drive was long and boring. Nothing interesting to report, except for the absolutely brutal moment that we got viciously crop dusted by the man across from us. He stood up to grab his bag from the overhead bins before disembarking at his stop, and crop dusted us with one of the most vile, lingering farts with his ass aimed directly at face level!!! Criminal!!!!!!!!! It took a solid 5 minutes for our eyes to stop watering from the stench.
It took about 7 hours to make it to Tacna. 1/3 of the journey completed! The Tacna bus stop was basic but comfortable, and we had lunch at a small restaurant in the station.
The colectivo station to take us across the border was just across the street, so walked across and found a helpful driver to take us across. He collected our passports and drove us 30 minutes down the road to the Peruvian/Chilean border. We stood in line while an adorable yellow lab sniffer dog checked our bags for contraband. We stamped our of Peru, crossed the street, and lined up to stamp into Chile.
I was entering Chile with my Taiwanese passport due to a visa situation. We were heading to Bolivia after Chile, and the Bolivian visa for US citizens is $160, while for Taiwanese citizens it’s only $30. The Bolivian border guards apparently will check for the exit stamp of the previous country if you’re in if crossing by land, so I wanted to enter Chile on my Taiwanese passport so there wouldn’t be any issues at the Bolivian border. However, this caused some confusion at the Chilean border when the border guard thought I was Chinese. He kept saying Chinese citizens need a visa and I kept saying I wasn’t Chinese! He eventually asked his supervisor who looked at my passport for 2 seconds and confirmed that I would be allowed in visa free.
After everyone on our bus had completed their immigration and customs border crossing procedures, we hopped back on the bus and drove another ~30 minutes to border city of Arica, Chile. We took out some Chilean pesos at the bus station ATM and then had a quick dinner at the bus terminal. At 8:45 pm, we boarded our last bus of the day, an 11 hour ride to San Pedro de Atacama. It was a spacious sleeper bus same as the ones we had been taking in Peru, so we were hoping we could actually get a good sleep.
We were absolutely exhausted after waking up so early and spending the whole day in transit, so we immediately reclined our seats, put in our AirPods and eye masks, and tried to go to sleep. Suddenly, I felt the person behind me kicking and hitting the back of my seat. I took out an AirPod and turned around, and this old lady started berating me (in Spanish) for reclining my seat into her space. The bus was literally an overnight sleeper bus with seats designed (and advertised!) to lay flat to 170 degrees, but she was complaining that my seat being back would take up her leg room (she was also like 5’2 lol). I had zero energy left to dedicate to this so I just google translated a message that said “I’m going to sleep I will be reclining my seat overnight, you can do the same”, put my headphones back in, and went back to sleep. Her petty response was to then started playing music and watching videos out loud on max volume on her phone, but our noise cancelling AirPods saved our butts and we drifted off to sleep.
At 10:45 pm, we were woken up by a commotion happening in the cabin and the lights coming back on. The driver came upstairs and started telling everybody to get off the bus. We were half asleep and so confused at what was happening, so we grabbed our bags and started packing up our stuff. The Karen behind me started banging on my seat again and made a big show on how she couldn’t get out of her seat because mine was reclined (yet nobody else had an issue).
We disembarked the bus, still confused at what was happening. Apparently, it was a customs search looking for fruits, vegetables, and seeds. We had already gone through customs on our way into Chile, so we were so annoyed that we had been woken up to be searched AGAIN. In all of our travels, we had never heard of or experienced an intra-country customs search. To add insult to injury, the customs officer made us open our bags but spent less than 3 seconds patting around before confirming we were good to go. If you’re going to wake us up to search… maybe actually search??
We got back onto the bus and immediately re-reclined to go back to bed. Little old Karen complained AGAIN and started hitting my chair, but I just ignored her and pretended I was asleep until she eventually got tired and gave up.
We drifted back to sleep… Only to be awoken by commotion AGAIN. You guessed it! Another fruits and veggies customs check! I checked my phone and it was 2:45 am. We were so tired and grumpy. We disembarked the bus yet again, grabbed our bags from the trunk, and opened them up to be searched. Again they took a 2 second glance at the bag and had us move along. We had been in Chile for 12 hours and already had our bags searched for fruits 3 times. What is their beef with fruits??
We got back on the bus and went to sleep again. Luckily, there were no more fruit searches. The next time I woke up, we were about 45 minutes outside of San Pedro. I looked behind me and Karen was gone, she had gotten off at an earlier stop. Looks like she could get out of her chair without me un-reclining after all!
We pulled into the cute little desert town around 7 am. We stopped for a quick breakfast, and then walked with our bags to the camper van rental office. We were renting a camper for 3 days with Wicked Campers.
The receptionist, Janine, spoke absolutely no English but was still so nice and funny. She walked us through all the paperwork and van checks (with lots of help from Google Translate), and gave us tons of amazing recommendations on where to go. The awesome thing about Chile is that wild camping is allowed anywhere and we didn’t need to be tied down to any campsite, so the world was truly our oyster on where we wanted to explore. After all the safety checks were completed, we hopped in the van and were on our way!
We rented the cheapest option, which had a manual transmission, and I did not know how to drive manual. Saz had learned how to drive on a manual car, so for the first time ever, I got to be a passenger princess as Saz took over the driving duties! We first headed to a local grocery store to stock up on supplies for the next few days. The camper came with a cooler, camping stove, and some basic pots and pans, so would be able to cook all our own meals out of the van. Fully stocked up with food and water, we set off into the desert for our adventure!
We found a sweet little spot off the side of the dirt road to stop and have lunch. It had been pretty chilly in the morning but the sun was now fully up and it was scorching, so we changed into shorts and enjoyed our first lunch of our camper adventure.
After lunch, Sazzie took on the role of driving instructor, as she taught me the basics of how and when to shift gears. It was the perfect place to learn, because the roads were long, flat, and barren. There was absolutely nobody around!
I was getting the hang of it, and wanted to try to pull a u-turn to go back to our camp site. Unfortunately, I accidentally stalled the car perpendicular to the road, blocking the road. As I was panicking and trying to get the car turned back on, I saw the faint outline of the only car we had seen all day driving towards me. Just my luck! We did a quick Chinese fire drill to get Saz back in the drivers seat to save the day.
It was late afternoon, so we headed to Valle de la Luna, a stunning park in the Atacama known for its moon-like landscapes, rugged terrain, and out of this world geological formations. The park had tons of hiking trails and pull off viewpoints, so we drove through the park checking out the different attractions.
Because tons of tour buses had just pulled up, we decided to drive to the last viewpoint in the park to start and work our way back, and our plan worked like a charm. We avoided all the other tourists and got to have some of the unreal trails all to ourselves. It was seriously like being on Mars, the terrain was so extraterrestrial. We did several hikes, with Saz rocking an umbrella to hide her delicate skin from the brutal Chilean desert sun. The Taiwanese grandmas would be so proud.
After 3 hours exploring Valle de Luna, we drove to a nearby lookout point called Piedra del Coyote. This spot was highly recommended for sunset, so we were posted up waiting for the sun to go down. It was pretty busy with tons of other tourists there to check out the amazing views, but we managed to snag a great spot right at the edge of the lookout. The sunset was unreal – a kaleidoscope of colours painting the sky. We watched as the sun dipped below the peaks in the distance. We stayed at Piedra del Coyote for over an hour, watching as the clouds were illuminated with unreal blues, purples, and pinks.
Once it got dark, we started the drive to our camp spot for the evening. We wanted to visit the El Tatio Geyers for sunrise the next morning, but Janine had said it was too cold to camp up there because it was over 4300 metres. She suggested we camped in the cute town of Machuca. It was on the way but at lower altitude, so we could still make it for sunrise and not have a huge drive in the morning.
Google Maps said the drive was about 1.5 hours from where we were for sunset, but the road conditions were bad. It was a very bumpy and pot-holey dirt road, and we quickly learned that our camper had absolutely NEGATIVE shocks. Every bump we could feel the kitchen equipment jolt and rattle and the weight of the car bouncing up and down. Nonetheless, Saz navigated the steep, rugged dirt roads like a champ. After over 2 hours of driving, we finally made it to Machuca and found a cute pull-off to set up camp for the night.
We had climbed quite high up the mountain and were almost at 4000 metres, so it was COLD! I quickly put some hot water on to boil for some tea, and then cooked some spaghetti bolognese and garlic bread for dinner. We also each tried to have a glass of Chilean wine we had bought, but the wine was freezing and we were freezing so it just simply did not hit. We ate as fast as we could, and were about to go to bed when we noticed the unreal display of stars up ahead. It was a full moon, but we were up at such high elevation that the sky was still incredibly clear. We saw the southern cross, Orion’s belt, and tons of other constellations. It was a magical way to end our first night in the van.
The next morning, our alarm went off at 4:45 AM and we reluctantly crawled out of our cozy sleeping bags to brave the cold. It was brutally cold, and Saz was suffering from some pretty bad acid reflux. Despite the discomfort, we decided we still wanted to make it to the geysers for sunrise, so we fired up the car and began our ascent. The car heating system worked very well and we had it cranked to the highest setting. The drive was super bumpy, and we kept getting overtaken by other (much more suitable for this road) vehicles. The drive was pitch black and we could barely see anything, but we did drive past a gorgeous lagoon with 30+ flamingos!
We got to the geysers shortly before sunrise, and walked through the park. El Tatio Geyser field is one of the world’s highest geyser fields at an elevation of over 4,300 meters (14,000 feet), and has over 80 active geysers. Despite the bitter cold, it was super cool to see the geysers in the morning, because the temperature difference between the geothermal water and the cold air made super dramatic steam eruptions. We stayed until the sun came up, and then began our drive back down the mountain.
It was really beautiful to see in the light, because we had no idea what terrain we had passed on the way up. We saw huge herds of vicunas, an undomesticated relative of llamas and alpacas, that is native to the Andes region. They are known for their fine, soft wool, which is highly prized and extremely expensive. We took our time on the drive back down the mountain, pulling off to take photos of wildlife and various beautiful landscapes. It felt like every 20-30 minutes we were in a completely new planet!
We made it down the mountain and back into San Pedro around noon, and needed to stop by the gas station to fill up. We drove by a sign advertising paid showers, and we decided that a shower might help us feel less gross and grimy, as we hadn’t showered since we left Peru over 2 days ago. The shower was actually life changing. We were so dusty and oily from all of our travels, so getting that all off and putting on clean clothes felt amazing.
Cleansed and rejuvenated, we bought some more ice and water at the local supermarket and then started our drive to our next location, Rainbow Valley.
Rainbow Valley was exactly like it sounded like – a huge valley with incredible, multi-coloured rocks, similar to the Rainbow Mountains in Peru. The different colours come from different minerals in the soil. We saw some stunning vistas, and had the entire place to ourselves! We spent a few hours exploring the gorgeous landscapes, and then decided to head back to set up camp before dark. I tackled most of the return drive back, practicing my manual driving skills (before swapping back with Saz when we neared town. Wasn’t brave enough to do that yet!)
We set up camp at the same spot we had lunch the day before, and cooked an incredible chicken pita dinner. We had marinated the chicken earlier in the day, so it came out so juicy and tender. Because we were camping at a lower altitude the second night, it was much warmer and we finally got to enjoy our delicious bottle of Chilean white and watch the unreal sunset. It was such a surreal feeling being completely alone in such a vast landscape. We got even luckier with the stars on night 2, because the moon was hidden behind a huge cloud. The sky was dotted with millions of stars.
The next morning, we drove about 20 minutes down the road for our sunrise adventure: the Magic Bus. It’s just an abandoned and graffiti’d school bus in the the middle of the desert. When we arrived, we met these 3 Irish/British people that had spent the night camping in the bus! We all watched the sunrise together, and it was even better than we could’ve ever imagined. All the sunrise and sunsets in the desert had truly been breathtaking.
We set up a breakfast camp, and enjoyed some tea and coffee in the middle of the desert. We had been loving the van life so much and were so sad that we had to return the camper van that afternoon.
However, we had 1 more spot we wanted to check out before we returned the van. The Hidden Lagoons of Baltinache are a group of saltwater pools right in the middle in the Atacama Desert of Chile. It’s only accessible via a super bumpy dirt road, so we started our drive. Google Maps said it would be about 30 minutes. We soon realised that was a super unrealistic ETA, because we physically could not make our van go faster than 20 km/hour without the whole car violently shaking and bouncing. We were so weighed down with such terrible shocks, we finally gave up on even trying to drive faster and cruised down the road at 20 km. Our van didn’t have AC and it was scorching hot, but if we rolled down the windows we would be inhaling dust. It was a rough drive. We kept getting overpassed by other cars zipping by us, and wished we could just hitch a ride with them.
We finally made it to the lagoons after over 2 hours of driving. The unique lagoons were electric blue in the barren red of the desert, and had crazy salt-crusted formations. We were allowed to swim in the ultra-buoyant, but freezing waters. Unfortunately for us, because the drive had taken so long and we had to return the van by 5 pm, we literally only had about 30 minutes at the lagoons to swim and enjoy before we had to turn around and drive the 2 hours on the terrible road all the way back. It was still a really cool experience to float in the extremely salty waters.
We began the drive back into town, and it took another gruellingly slow 2 hours. We returned the camper shortly before they closed, and then checked into our Airbnb. We had been loving the van so much and wished that we had rented it for a few more days, but the Airbnb was very nice and cozy too. We cooked a nice dinner of mashed potatoes and chicken, and then went to bed.
We spent the next 2 days exploring the little town of San Pedro, before we packed up and started our next adventure: a 3 day tour through Southern Bolivia to the world famous Uyuni Salt Flats!
