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Photo by kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
San Pedro de Atacama in May
sweet spot · one of the best months to go
The year in San Pedro de Atacama
Tap a month for its page
- JanJSan Pedro de Atacama in January: good, busy
- FebFSan Pedro de Atacama in February: sweet spot
- MarMSan Pedro de Atacama in March: good, busy
- AprASan Pedro de Atacama in April: sweet spot
- MayMSan Pedro de Atacama in May: sweet spot
- JunJSan Pedro de Atacama in June: sweet spot
- JulJSan Pedro de Atacama in July: sweet spot
- AugASan Pedro de Atacama in August: sweet spot
- SepSSan Pedro de Atacama in September: good
- OctOSan Pedro de Atacama in October: good, busy
- NovNSan Pedro de Atacama in November: good, busy
- DecDSan Pedro de Atacama in December: good, busy
- Sweet spot
- Good
- OK
- Avoid
- Busy
Plan this trip
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Flights
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Where to stay
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Luxury
Things to do
Car hire
Travel insurance
Check whether your bank card or home insurance already covers this trip.
If the trip needs a visa, the travel agent or visa centre usually sells the cover it asks for.
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Your own plan's EU roaming may already cover this.
Renting a pocket Wi-Fi is the other common way to stay connected.
These are sites people in book with. Each opens in a new tab, on the site's own pages.
The numbers
| Daily high | 21°C |
|---|---|
| Nightly low | 5°C |
| Feels like, afternoon | 17°C |
| Rainy days, 1 mm or more | 0 · 2 mm |
| Humidity | 20% |
| Sunshine | 10.6 h/day |
| Daylight | 11.0 h/day |
| Hiking | 31 of 31 days dry and 10–27 °C good |
| Crowds | 100 / 100, higher is quieter |
Ten-year averages for this calendar month. A rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts it. The model these figures come from drizzles more than a rain gauge, the more so the warmer the month, so its days count from 2 mm, rising to 5 mm in the hottest.
Weather read at the village: ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.
How busy it gets
Public holidays in May
Holidays crowd a place out and push fares up around them; they count toward the crowd score above.
San Pedro de Atacama in pictures
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kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Luca Galuzzi (Lucag), CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
What to pack
- Warm layers for the evenings, which drop to about 5°C.
- Sun protection: about 11 hours of sunshine a day.
Each line is a threshold over the ten-year figures above, not advice from anywhere else.
Before you go
Type C and L plugs at 220 V. Drives on the right. The currency is the Chilean peso. No UK Foreign Office advice against travel. Global Affairs Canada: Exercise a high degree of caution. US State Department: Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution. Everything for Chile: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.
On arrival in San Pedro de Atacama: the apps, paying, getting around, tipping and the emergency numbers.
May elsewhere
In May from
The other months at San Pedro de Atacama
- January good
- February sweet spot
- March good
- April sweet spot
- May
- June sweet spot
- July sweet spot
- August sweet spot
- September good
- October good
- November good
- December good
← April · All twelve months at San Pedro de Atacama · June →
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