Rates: From $1,870 per person per night, including meals, drinks, and activities
The Afar take
Driving through the Atacama Desert in northern Chile can feel a bit like fast-forwarding through the Star Wars franchise and pausing each time you reach a surreal new planet: endless salt flats one moment, rainbow-hued mountains the next, gurgling geyser fields, flamingo-dotted lagoons, and snow-capped volcanoes in between. The driest nonpolar desert on Earth may look alien, but it’s now home again to one of South America’s most stylish and welcoming retreats.
After a year-long, $12 million renovation, Tierra Atacama reopened in April 2025. A member of Baillie Lodges, the 28-room property sits just outside the town of San Pedro de Atacama on the site of a former cattle corral, hidden behind unassuming adobe-brick walls that belie the high-design interiors within. With Indigenous Atacameño design and crafts, local ingredients sourced from the desert, and excursions into otherworldly landscapes, the revitalized lodge has become a showcase for the region’s culture and natural wonder.
Who’s Tierra Atacama for?
Tierra Atacama is for travelers who care as much about forward-thinking, place-driven design as they do the great outdoors and corners of the world that still remain well off the tourist trail. Active types will enjoy the thrill of getting out into the desert ecosystem, spotting its surprising biodiversity, and taking in the impressively dark skies overhead, while culture aficionados will appreciate the Indigenous craft, contemporary art, and excursions that celebrate millennia of human history in the region.
Those who prefer a more DIY approach to discovering new places (such as wandering solo through museums or dining at local restaurants) might feel restricted by how much of the experience is guided and focused at the hotel, but I welcomed the expertise and passion of the team—and the freedom of being able to truly relax without having to do any of my own planning. While Tierra Atacama welcomes children 10 years and over, families with kids on the younger end of that spectrum might struggle with the long, multi-part trip to get here and the harshness of the conditions: the intense sun, the dryness, the altitude.

The Andes Mountains provide a scenic backdrop for the Tierra Atacama pool.
Courtesy of Tierra Atacama
The location: San Pedro de Atacama
The Atacama Desert is located in the northernmost stretches of Chile, near the borders with Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru, and it’s famous for its diversity of landscapes, including salt flats, high-altitude geysers, and vast expanses of red-rock formations. Tierra Atacama is about a 10-minute stroll outside the pedestrian heart of San Pedro de Atacama, a remote desert town with a handful of empanada shops, artisan galleries, backpacker hostels, and ice cream parlors.
Guests usually fly through Santiago to Calama, the country’s copper-mining capital, before a 75-minute chauffeured drive through the desert, with the Andes looming in the background (Bolivia is on the other side) and llama-like guanaco grazing roadside.
Driving through the Atacama Desert can feel a bit like fast-forwarding through the Star Wars franchise and pausing each time you reach a surreal new planet.

Chilean contemporary art and Indigenous Atacameño crafts add character to sleek, modernist suites.
Courtesy of Tierra Atacama
The rooms and property: Atacameño-inspired architecture and design
The Atacama is a landscape of sprawling, wide-open horizontals, reflected in the low-slung, modernist architecture. “The entire hotel faces the Licanbur volcano, a conical mountain revered by the Indigenous peoples,” project architect Matías Rodriguez says. “The terraces focus the attention on the volcano, with pools of water to reflect the skies and contrast from the firepits, using natural elements to showcase the energy of the desert.”
Upon first glance, the space might resemble a home in Joshua Tree or Palm Springs, but on closer inspection, the buildings and interior design are in direct conversation with the aesthetic specifics of this region. The palette draws on the green trunks of algarrobo trees, the orange seed pods of chañar trees, and the inky blues of the night sky.
During the renovation, the room count was reduced from 32 to 28, resulting in expansive suite configurations. My 750-square-foot suite was laid out along a wide axis, with floor-to-ceiling glass doors opening to a plunge pool and a seating area with cushioned loungers. (Regular rooms are about half the size, at about 375 square feet, but make smart use of outdoor spaces and regional decor.) Lenga wood paneling lends warmth to the sleek and modernist aesthetic, with locally quarried travertine floors, a soaking tub, a sculptural fireplace suspended from the ceiling, and an indoor/outdoor shower that makes the bracing chill of a desert morning part of the experience.
I was charmed by the way Santiago-based interior designer Carolina Delpiano has curated Chilean—and specifically Indigenous Atacameño—art and design objects, pairing contemporary artworks with pieces that feel timeless. Volcanic liparite stone carvings of llamas, donkeys, and houses by Alejandro González, an artisan from nearby Toconao village, look like ancient ceremonial relics. They’ve been a part of the hotel since before the refurbishment and were so beloved that they were kept in storage for the grand unveiling.
Within guest rooms and suites, handwoven llama and sheep wool textiles and locally crafted ceramics share the space with bold modern works: photographer Andrés Figueroa’s portraits of colorfully costumed dancers from altiplano villages; graphic, mazelike prints by Hugo-Rivera Scott; and installations by María Edwards, inspired by science and the Atacameñan cosmo vision. Her pieces—which also appear in the lobby—evoke astronomical charts, a professor’s blackboard scrawls, and constellations stitched together with string and paper scraps. Less conceptual but equally charming are the turndown gifts that appeared each night: fig-scented candles, hand-knitted slippers from the island of Chiloé, and even colorful dolls woven in southern Chile with sheep’s wool and plant-based dyes.

All meals are included at the on-site restaurant; dishes often feature Pacific seafood, local meats (such as guanaco), and herbs and fruits foraged in the surrounding desert.
Photos by Jeffrey Kieffer
The food and drink: regional ingredients
All meals are included in the rate and served in the sunny dining room or on the volcano-view patio. House wines and spirits are complimentary, though a cellar master’s list is available for an additional cost—tempting in a country with a wine scene as robust as Chile’s.
For afternoon and evening meals, the menu offers international staples (sandwiches, salads), but the better option is to stick to the rotating three-course daily menus that draw more explicitly from Chilean flavors and Atacaman ingredients: guanaco loin with corn puree, corvina ceviche with Peruvian corn and sweet potato, trout and abalone with parmesan-garlic emulsion.
This is the kind of place where you’re rewarded for curiosity. Ask questions and be rewarded with conversations about sourcing, inspirations, and traditions. Chañar ice cream, for instance, is made with the sweet, nutty pod of a tree found on the property, and it tastes like a woody caramel. Rica-rica, a minty desert shrub used in traditional Atacameño medicine, shows up in the house pisco sour—a cocktail whose origins Chileans and Peruvians still debate.
The warm, welcoming atmosphere reached its peak during the “Noche de Fuego,” a backyard barbecue that involved a parade of meats cooked over an asado, including steaks, guanaco, octopus, trout, and Patagonian-style lamb slow-roasted on an iron frame over an open fire. As a solo traveler (albeit an extroverted one), I usually expect quiet dinners with a book or notebook, but this cookout had a way of pulling everyone together, chatting about cuts of meat, trading grilling tips, and refilling glasses of full-bodied Chilean carménère.

Look for liparite stone carvings of llamas throughout the Uma spa.
Photo by Tomas Encina
Staff and service
Tierra Atacama blends the attentiveness you’d expect from a luxury design hotel, with a more convivial, conversational vibe that fits the rugged, lodge-like setting. Many of the staff members I met at the hotel came from other parts of Chile and across Latin America, drawn here just as much as the guests are by the wildness of the terrain; I loved talking with them and feeling their enthusiasm about, for example, the drama of the night sky or the desert plants they’ve learned about since moving to the region. There’s a general sense of, Can you believe we get to work here?
Accessibility
Despite the region’s rough terrain, the property’s many buildings are connected by paved pathways that make ground-floor rooms accessible for travelers with mobility challenges, and there are accommodations specially designed for wheelchair users as well, with features such as wider doors, shower seats, and grab bars in the bathrooms. While Tierra Atacama aims to find accessible alternatives for some of its excursions, note that the hotel does not have any vehicles adapted for accessibility needs, so travelers would need to be able to get in and out of wheelchairs to get to and from any off-site activities.
Make a trip of it: The desert landscape and unique wildlife
As lovely as the property is, the goal at Tierra Atacama is to be outside in the desert as much as possible. Upon arrival, I chatted with the guide team to come up with a custom roster of excursions. Options range from biking and horseback riding to full-day volcano treks. In the interest of variety, we chose shorter outings that showcased the region’s breadth.
On my first afternoon, knowing I’m an avid bird-watcher, my guide, Sebastian, drove me out to Laguna Chaxa, where salt pans attract three species of flamingos that come here to feed on brine shrimp. The pastel-hued scene was only slightly dampened by the lagoon’s sulfurous smell, and we finished the experience with sundowners at the edge of a canyon after an ultra-brief but very rare rain shower (well, more of a few-second sprinkle).

Vicuñas live at higher elevations and are rounded up by local herders for their wool; the viscacha looks a bit like a rabbit but it’s more closely related to chinchillas.
Photo by Nick DeRenzo
The next day, we drove through Vallecito’s dramatic rock formations, which look like the surface of Mars or the moon. At a dome-shaped rock that used to be a salt mine, Sebastian sprinkled sand over the halite (rock salt) surface to show me how it tinkles like a toy xylophone, and we paused to listen as the mountain cracked and groaned in the morning sun. What surprised me the most was how lifeless this valley felt: It’s so inhospitably salty and dry that I didn’t see a bird in the sky or hear an insect or encounter a blade of grass for miles around.
Wildlife appeared again on our drive up to Laguna Piedras Rojas, which sits at about 14,000 feet. (That is quite high, and the hotel sets out dispensers of coca-leaf-infused water on the bar for guests who are battling altitude sickness.) Along the ascent we passed by ostrich-like rheas and viscachas, cousins of chinchillas with long stiff whiskers that make them look like wise old men. The guanacos at lower elevations gave way to daintier vicuñas, which are believed to be the wild ancestors of alpacas and are prized for their ultra-soft, ultra-expensive wool. Rather than domesticate them, locals herd, catch, shear, and release them.
On another morning, we left the hotel before sunrise for El Tatio, the Southern Hemisphere’s largest geyser field. In the 15ºF chill, the steam plumes rose against the dawn light, with bubbling pools that get their odd colors from extremophile microorganisms that scientists have studied as clues to life on Mars. It was also an ideal area to spot culpeos, or Andean foxes—tawny, feisty carnivores that have become a little too comfortable with approaching visitors because of the bad behavior (and food left behind by) some travelers.
Perhaps the most special place was Yerbas Buenas, which looks like an unassuming pile of boulders from the road, but is in fact a fascinating archaeological site that is believed to be an ancient Indigenous caravan stop. Thousands of years ago, traveling herders carved llamas, jaguars, foxes, monkeys, and flamingos into the rocks, leaving behind a menagerie of petroglyphs that suggested the far-flung places from which they had originated.

Astronomers love the Atacama Desert for its ultra-dark, crystal-clear night skies.
Photo by shark girl/Shutterstock
Stargazing in an astrotourism capital
The Atacama Desert is one of the best places in the world for stargazing—it’s high, it’s dry, and virtually free of light pollution. While the night skies from the lodge are dazzling, Tierra partners with Observatorio Hemisferio Sur, a 20-minute drive into the desert, where telescopes reveal globular clusters and nebulae invisible to the naked eye.
The most memorable discovery, though, was the Indigenous sky lore. Unlike Western traditions that make constellations by linking together stars, ancient Andeans saw shapes in the black voids between them—what the Inca called yana phuyu, or “dark clouds.” My guide joked that it takes “a lot of imagination and a glass of whiskey” (which the hotel happily provides) to see them. But as I focused, a llama appeared out of the darkness like a Magic Eye poster. The Atacama has a way of shifting your perceptions, whether of landscapes, culture, or the heavens.