Argentina & Chile: From Salta to Atacama

Twelve nights from Salta in Argentina across the Andes into the Atacama on a Royal Enfield, a cross-border version of the operator’s Andean raid with the driest desert on earth added to it.

Salta opens it, then Iruya through the UNESCO listed Quebrada de Humahuaca over the Condor Pass at 4,000 metres, to a village at 2,780. Cusi Cusi follows with condors about at dawn and the Valle de la Luna at 3,800 metres near the Bolivian border, then Susques on a day entirely off road along Ruta 40, to a weaving village at 3,700.

The Paso de Jama carries the route into Chile at 4,200 metres, with some 200 kilometres of uninhabited desert on the far side and San Pedro de Atacama at the end of it. Rio Grande follows on salt-mountain tracks and through desert canyons, with sunset from the Piedra del Coyote.

The Tatio geysers are the set piece, reached by leaving at six in the morning and riding between volcanoes to 4,300 metres: eighty geysers, roughly eight per cent of the world’s total and the third largest field anywhere, which steam hardest in the cold just after dawn. A Bolivian border track follows, then the return crossing and San Antonio de los Cobres, a mining town at 3,750 metres, before the Quebrada del Toro drops the route back towards Salta. Bike rental is included and the price is quoted per person. Twelve days spent mostly above 3,000 metres is the real difficulty here, and the cold before sunrise at Tatio is considerable.