Calama

Chile is a geographically long country so travelling around it is actually somewhat cumbersome due to the distances between cities. Calama is convenient because they have an airport making it convenient if you want to cut the travelling time from santiago to San Pedro de atacama – just another couple hours on a mini bus out to San Pedro.

There’s a big bus terminal here too, so its convenient to take a sleeper up to the north (to head up to peru)