To get to Atacama, the driest desert in the world and a top tourist attraction in Chile, you fly to Calama which is a 2.5 hour flight north of Santiago.
Lonely Planet, which tends to be charitable to just about every nook and cranny in the world, begins its section on Calama: “This place is a shithole.” Don’t hang around, it says. Go straight to San Pedro, the small tourist town near the desert, where adobe covered hotels and restaurants line the sandy streets.
Except Lonely Planet didn’t actually give any info for how to get to San Pedro from Calama. So Steve and I took a taxi from the airport to the bus station — looking out the
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