Introduction
Hotel Altiplanico was one of the original boutique desert-style lodges in San Pedro de Atacama. It offers simple, but bohemian-decorated style rooms, some with protected outdoor showers. There is a restaurant and small outdoor pool as well.
The location of the hotel is about 1km away from the centre of the village, at the entry to the Quitor Canyon, which offers a degree of quietness.
Altiplanico is part of a small, family network of Altiplanico hotels at key Chilean tourist destinations. Each hotel is unique and personal, the objective being to create a “homely” ambience, as well as being individually designed to blend into the local environment.
About
For ExperienceChile.Org the Altiplanico has always been one of our favourites. At San Pedro de Atacama the Altiplanico design concept has been to create a building that blends into the natural surroundings, both inside and out. Walls are constructed from adobe, meaning clay bricks mixed with stones, wood and straw. They are then coloured in a deep red, or brown-orange, reflecting a natural earth colour of the desert, combined with interior straw, or wood-beamed ceilings, and indigenous decorations on some of the walls and around the lights.
Rooms are also individual, some larger than others with en-suite bathrooms, some with exterior showers with no roof, but where the user can enjoy bathing under the natural sky. However, there are walls all around providing privacy at ground level at least.
This hotel is definitely “cosy” and an ideal place to receive the Atacama experience, but at a lower cost than some other lodges.
When standing outside the hotel entrance, to left is the impressive Quitor Canyon, with is steep walls and San Pedro river flowing through the canyon floor, which is also a nice place to explore on bikes. On the horizon opposite the hotel is the dominant, perfectly conical and sometimes snow topped Licancabur Volcano keeping watch over San Pedro de Atacama village.
Restaurant
In the main reception building (which is small, and a mix of a lounge with small eating area) is the restaurant, where breakfast is also served. Altiplanico’s ethos is to provide a “homely” ambience and to this degree the restaurant offers food more in line with home cooking, based upon Peruvian, Chilean and Atacameñan dishes rather than “haute cuisine”. Typical ingredients used are purple-coloured potatoes, quinoa, scallops, chañar and indigenous-cultivated corn.
Upon entry into San Pedro de Atacama village, to get to Altiplanico one needs to turn left on the road that leads to Pukará de Quitor. The lodge is then approximately 1km from the village on the left. For those seeking quietness, yet wish to be reasonably close to the village, this location is good.
Altiplanico Lodge offers 31 guest rooms spread around three separate semicircles, with small, cultivated patches of ground in between each one. The average room area is 30m, and with the bathroom and terrace included this rises to 38m. Within these different room sectors are accommodation categories for single, double, triple and family occupation.
In addition, rooms have Wi-Fi service, private bathrooms, and individual terraces. Some of the guest rooms also have an outdoor shower with walls, but no roof. This provides bathers with an exhilarating as well as a liberating way to start the day.
Another aspect to the Altiplanico rooms is that they have been interior decorated in a way to keep things “simple”, but effort has gone in to using varied, natural colours on the walls as well as hanging indigenous crafted blankets on some of the walls. Furniture has been chosen in line with the overall concept, which is to create an ambience of the natural Atacama Desert within.
We will include this hotel as part of your itinerary if requested to do so or if required for a logistical reason, or if it suits your itinerary budget.
What we can offer always depends on the content of your itinerary, so please, get in touch.
If you're interested in this hotel, please don't hesitate contacting us or fill out our enquiry form below.
