So is! As you are reading, the World Travel Awards, which are known as the Oscar awards for tourism, has rewarded the Atacama Desert for the second consecutive year as the Best Romantic Destination in South America. A true oasis of nature and love in northern Chile!
It is not for less, because San Pedro de Atacama, the world’s most arid desert town, is a place to escape at any time of the year, with the clearest and purest skies in the world and a landscape of colors and reliefs Unique on our planet.
Surrounded by volcanoes, among which the highest volcano in South America stands out, the mythical Licancabur, geysers that allow us to feel the force of nature expelling water at high temperatures emerging from the depths of the earth, highland lagoons surrounded by native fauna and flora protected and completely natural hot springs. All this and much more! It makes the desert awarded with this important popular voting prize.
San Pedro de Atacama, a perfect place for your honeymoon
If you are one of those travelers who are looking for the perfect place to visit as a couple, combining days of rest, sun and pleasant temperatures at any time of the year, completely clean skies to admire the stars, exquisite restaurants, bicycle adventures and the most beautiful sunsets of the planet, without a doubt San Pedro de Atacama is the best destination in South America for honeymooners.
Today there is a high range of hotel offer with the widest spectrum of prices, which mostly offer massages, meals and tours, which help the visitor to have a well guided and contained experience in the desert.
The Atacama Desert and its surrounding villages are a destination to forget about television and any earthly event, because it seems like a place on another planet.
Tour the famous Valley of the Moon and Death Valley, and feel next to your better half as if they were walking on the moon or the planet Mars, full of mystery, silence, reliefs and colors that provide the most romantic sunsets ever seen in Another place on the planet.
And if they are a couple who likes adrenaline and a bit of action, in Death Valley they can sandboard from a giant dune or, go almost completely with a bicycle or horse.
After sunset, after a rich shower, going out to enjoy the gastronomic offers that the town of San Pedro has is a gift for the palate. In the main restaurants of Caracoles street, dinner can be a time to get to know the typical music of the area played live by locals, illuminated by the light of the fire, delighting in exquisite dishes that you would never imagine finding in the most arid desert of the world.
And if you still have energy and interest left, nothing more romantic and interesting than ending the day contemplating the infinite sky that this oasis presents, making us remember how small we are.
Enjoy the waters of this oasis
It seems incredible, but this desert named the driest in the world due to the almost zero rains that it presents, has a huge amount of offers of different modalities of experiences linked to water, that connect you with your soulmate and have made the Desert of Atacama is the Best Romantic Destination in South America.
Let’s start with one of the richest and most unforgettable experiences, the Puritama Hot Springs. Located 35 kms from San Pedro de Atacama and 3,475 meters above sea level, inserted in a large stone ravine, you will find these hot springs that in the indigenous language means “hot waters”.
The water, with temperatures between 25ºC and 30 ° C, has medicinal and therapeutic properties since it feeds on the minerals that the Puritama river brings. The bathrooms have wooden paths that connect the pools together, bathrooms, dressing rooms, cafeteria and massage services on weekends. An ideal place to go as a couple and have privacy and rest in the midst of nature in all its splendor.
If you go with a tourist agency, they usually go to the hot springs on the return trip to the Tatio Geysers, but if you go directly to the hot springs you can arrive by private vehicle or by taking a tour from the center of San Pedro de Atacama.
Another unforgettable experience to live as a couple is the Cejar and Tebinquinche lagoon. Inside the huge Salar de Atacama are these extremely salty waters, in the middle of a beautiful landscape of turquoise colors, volcanoes and the greatness of this saline deposit that hides under its surface a huge lake.
After floating in these turquoise waters, you follow the route through the Ojos del Salar, two freshwater wells in the middle of the driest desert in the world and, finally, in the Tebinquinche lagoon, where you can enjoy a delicious snack contemplating the reflection of the Andes in its waters, along with the whiteness of salt. The sunset, with ocher colors and strong hues, offers a true spectacle before our eyes.
And finally, the trip to the meeting of the Miscanti and Miñiques lagoons, also called Altiplanic Lagoons given its location at 4,500 meters above sea level, is a true mystical experience given the explosion of emotions to see such an overwhelming landscape Like this destiny
The love between the Licancabur and Quimal volcano
How to question that the Atacama desert has been awarded as the most romantic place in South America, when even the most known is the legend between the eternal love that the highest volcano in Latin America, the Licancabur and its beloved Quimal have.
The locals of northern Chile tell us that the young Licancabur could not escape his destiny that would lead him to be the most important mountain for the desert inhabitants. But that did not interest him, since Quimal was always in his mind, the young woman of a unique and imaginable beauty. They spent every afternoon sitting on the edge of the salt watching the sun die after that lonely mountain range without mountains, which would later be called Domeyco. Both fell passionately in love and promised never to separate.
Every year in the months of February and August the promise of eternal love blooms with the shadow of Licancabur that caresses the lonely Quimal in the distance and stoke her feelings. And on the other side is Lascar, the jealous and grumpy volcano forever spitting smoke and fire, scaring the locals because their love for Quimal never matched.
You know, San Pedro de Atacama invites from its legends of volcano origins to its most beautiful natural landscapes accompanied by hotel architecture, to a meeting of the most romantic you can see in South America, which is why the World Travel Award today awarded with this worldwide recognition.