San Pedro de Atacama

The Atacama Desert surrounding San Pedro holds a genuinely extreme distinction: some weather stations here have never recorded measurable rainfall since records began, making it the driest non-polar desert on Earth. A combination of the cold offshore Humboldt Current, the Andes blocking moisture from the Amazon basin, and a persistent high-pressure system overhead conspire to keep rain-bearing weather systems away almost entirely.

That same dryness, paired with high altitude and minimal light pollution, has made the region one of the best places on the planet for astronomy. ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, sits on the Chajnantor plateau near San Pedro at over 5,000 meters elevation, its dozens of radio telescope dishes forming one of the most powerful astronomical instruments ever built, taking advantage of exactly the atmospheric clarity the desert's dryness produces.

Valle de la Luna, a short drive from town, earns its name honestly — wind-eroded rock formations, salt crusts, and dune fields create a landscape that genuinely resembles lunar terrain, especially at sunset, when shifting light draws out deep reds and golds across the rock.

El Tatio, one of the highest-altitude geyser fields in the world at over 4,200 meters, is typically visited at sunrise, when the cold desert air makes the geysers' steam columns rise dramatically against the volcanic backdrop — a timing that also means a genuinely early, cold start for visitors.

San Pedro's small, low adobe-building town center feels almost incidental compared to the landscapes surrounding it, having grown from a small agricultural settlement into a tourism hub built specifically around access to the desert, salt flats, and colored high-altitude lagoons that draw visitors from around the world.