The Best Hotels Near Explora Atacama, by the Record
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Eight thousand feet above sea level, surrounded by salt flats and volcanic formations, this all-inclusive desert resort sits in one of the most remote corners of the planet. Architecture crouches low to the earth around stone patios and outdoor pools, with no televisions and no agenda beyond getting you outside. Hotel guides lead treks across salt flats, horseback rides over dunes, and climbs to the rim of a volcano. The bar exists mainly for exhausted hikers to compare notes. It holds a Michelin Key.
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Eight private adobe cottages sit along the river in San Pedro de Atacama, furnished with custom-built rustic pieces rather than the usual design-catalog signifiers of luxury. The couple behind it are an architect and a decorator who clearly decided to prove something by going in the opposite direction. Meals, transfers, and excursions in a fleet of 4x4s are all folded into the rate, including nighttime stargazing with an astronomer. It holds 2 Michelin Keys.
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Adobe walls, rough-hewn wood, and clean modernist lines hold their own against a volcano on the horizon. This 32-room all-inclusive boutique resort sits in the Atacama Desert, where the landscape reads as either breathtaking or hostile depending on your mood, and probably both. Rooms are spare but genuinely warm to the touch, and everything from airport transfers to guided volcano climbs is folded into the rate. Michelin awarded it one Key.
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The Atacama is the driest desert on earth, which makes choosing to build a 51-room hotel here either a provocation or a statement of faith in good air conditioning. Habitas leans into the setting rather than fighting it, with rooms built in traditional regional construction methods, plenty of outdoor lounge space, a small spa, and skies so clear that stargazing counts as an activity. The wood-fired restaurant, Almas, works local Atacaman produce.
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Terracotta buildings the color of the surrounding Salt Mountains make this all-inclusive desert lodge nearly disappear into the Cordillera de Sal, which is the point. The Andean garden grows indigenous plants and the occasional wandering alpaca, the restaurant pulls from local organic produce, and the spa runs Turkish baths for when the canyon biking catches up with you. Stargazing from a private terrace is a given. A Michelin two-key property, with a three-night minimum.