Atacama & Uyuni

San Pedro de Atacama is an oasis village at two and a half thousand metres, surrounded by the strangest landscapes in South America: salt valleys, geysers at dawn, lagoons with flamingos and volcanoes with snow on top. North of it, across the Bolivian border, the altiplano climbs past coloured lakes to the Salar de Uyuni, a white plain so flat and so vast that the horizon disappears. Together they are the high desert, the far end of the Andean world that begins in the Argentine Northwest.

San Pedro takes three nights, enough for the Valle de la Luna at sunset, the Tatio geysers at sunrise and the lagoons of the salt flat, with a day in between for the altitude. From there, the crossing to Uyuni is the journey itself: three or four days by road through the altiplano, sleeping in remote lodges, arriving at the salt flat from the south. The region connects naturally with the Northwest of Argentina, which lies a day's drive east of San Pedro over the Paso de Jama, and with Santiago by air; an itinerary can run from Salta to Atacama to Uyuni without ever leaving the high desert.

Atacama works all year: it almost never rains, the days are warm and the nights cold, and the only variable is wind. Uyuni has two faces. From December to March the rains leave a thin sheet of water on the salt flat and turn it into a mirror, when the altiplano roads can be difficult; from April to November it is dry, white and hard, with clear skies and very cold nights.