Explora en Atacama - All Inclusive

This hotel is absolutely beautiful and the explorations are fantastic. I would recommend to anyone wanting to experience Atacama!

I chose here as I was traveling solo and wanted to experience the tours without the stress of booking them separately. The hotel, location, ambience and food did not dissapoint, it was exceptional. Please note this is not a luxury, sit around all day, soaking up the sun and having drinks by the pool experience, this is an active luxury experience. You are up at 7AM to go on tours and back by 4, tired but fulfilled. Most times all you can do is shower, eat dinner and go to sleep to wake up for another early morning tour. It was exactly what I wanted as the active part of my trip. The guides are very knowledgeable and work with you to create your Atacama Desert experience. I stayed 4 days, 3 nights and did 8 tours, including Stargazing twice. The food is different and can be often regarded as culinary creations as they focus on using local products and herbs. Some creations were tastier than others. The hotel is clean, the rooms are perfect and there is turn down service everynight accompanied by a sweet and a note. I felt appreciated for my presence and not my money, this is what I want when I choose a luxurious service. I highly recommend Explora.

Stayed here after staying in Explora Rapa Nui. The lodge is beautiful and huge. The food is even more amazing than RN (thanks to chef Martinez from Central!!!) and service is just as amazing. Guides seems a notch above RN, and the rooms are just as nice/comfortable. The onsite observatory is a big bonus, as is the ability to go horseback riding. Unfortunately 15 min before shuttle back to Calama the manager (Maria) decide to accuse me of stealing their blanket (ridiculous..nothing special and one of them would fill my entire suitcase). People who pay this price point to stay is not likely to be the type who would do this. I offered her to open my suitcase to check, but she declined......This totally soured the otherwise wonderful stay I had, and thus the less than 5 star rating. I hope she won't pull this to other clients as the place is otherwise magical and I would recommend to any of my travelling friends.

Spent 4 nights here. The Atacama Desert is a totally amazing place to visit with an incredible range of landscapes, altitudes, etc. Our travel agent added this to the itinerary. I had no knowledge of this area and not a huge interest in going but just went with it. It was definitely way more than I imagined and super cool to see. The Explora guides were great, the excursions were interesting and fun and in small to very small groups. Food was excellent! Liked having breakfast buffet and lunch buffet as well as menu options. To-go snacks before hikes were limited to nuts and whole fruit and maybe some dried fruit, which is fine and certainly healthier than a bunch of processed bars and candies but sort of limited. Some excursions offered snacks like brownies and fresh fruit and drinks during of after the excursion. Bar is nice but underutilized. Dining area nice, especially the outdoor dining area. Rooms are fine. Pillows good. Lots of room for laying out your gear on benches. Kind of a small bathroom with a tub shower but it was okay. Only suggestions for improvement: (1) have a detailed listing of all the excursions with info about distance, elevation gain, drive time, location, etc. and a difficulty rating for each (like they offer in Explora Torres del Paine). There is understandably a focus on what type of geography and which part of the desert you'll see, but too little focus on how tough of a hike you're going to get. Some of our group wanted tougher or just longer hikes. Also a little more advance planning of excursions could be sketched out as a plan so someone can achieve the high altitude hikes by the last day if they want to. One of our group was disappointed he couldn't do a super high altitude difficult hike the last day because he hadn't been working his way up in altitude already the past 2-3 days. And booking the star gazing should be done more in advance because only 8 people can do it each night in Span and 8 in English. It was a must do!