Earlier this year we posted a feature story on a “rustic luxury” overland tour from southern Bolivia to the Atacama Desert. This Explora Travesia is a really special trip, with hardly any other humans around and a daily feeling that you’ve got the whole desert almost to yourself. At night it’s just you, your travel mates, and the stars. You can see lots of gorgeous photos in the article, but here’s a video tour we just posted:
This is a simple video shot with a regular camera, but even with that equipment and a bumpy road (sometimes driving across salt), you can see how spectacular the landscapes are. While the places you stay at night aren’t 5-star, you get your own bathroom to use and the food is excellent. When you walk outside and look up, you’ll see far more than five stars. More than you could count in a week.
You probably won’t drink much wine though: you’re at 14,000 feet and above much of the time. Bring some layers and try to acclimatize before you arrive!
Explora also runs these Travesia trips in Patagonia, from northern Argentina to Uyuni, and from the Chilean coast to there. See more at the Explora website.
We don’t have much else posted on Bolivia since the tourism infrastructure there is more geared to backpackers and business travelers than luxury tourists. Chile is a different story of course, so see our luxury tour stories and hotel reviews for that country to learn more when planning your own adventure of a lifetime.
You can also subscribe to the Luxury Latin America YouTube channel to see video tours as we post them. Next up will be something from Quito, joining a few others we have from Ecuador.
That trip looks fantastic! And nobody else around it seems like except where those mud geysers are. Was it really that empty the whole week? I had a friend who went to Atacama and she said it was kind of a zoo there, with a hundred tourists showing up at one time at some of the places.
We hardly saw another soul most of the time after leaving Uyuni, though the closer we got to Chile the more tourists there were. San Pedro de Atacama probably has more tourists in one day than all of southern Bolivia gets in a week or two.