Towards the Atacama

Travelling north from La Serena, the road veers inland and the scenery becomes semi-desert. If you’re extremely lucky, recent rainfall may have created the amazing but temporary spectacle of the ‘flowering desert’, with masses of brightly coloured wild flowers covering the apparently barren ground. The colours vary according the region, so it may be worth taking a detour off the main road, west or east, if the flowers appear while you’re in the area.

The only place of note in this section is Vallenar, and if you’ve had a slow morning’s drive (200 km) from La Serena it may make sense to stop here for lunch, and petrol. There’s not a lot happening in the town, but there are one or two pleasant places to eat. The Italian restaurant Bocatto, on Plaza de Armas, does a quick and tasty meal, and you can usually park easily nearby.

Carrying on up the highway, it’s another 150km to Copiapo, the last big town before the Atacama. The road runs through more arid terrain, but also down and up the side of wide river valleys, with some cultivation at the lower levels. The traffic will probably be much lighter now than it was round La Serena, so it comes as a bit of a surprise when the Panamericana takes you right through Copiapo, and you actually find yourself in lines of traffic waiting at the lights. There’s plenty of accommodation to be had, so you may want to stop here for the night. Or you may want to head west, along the fringes of the desert proper, to the Pacific.