SCSE - SCPE
Not a lot of time lately to document the journey, so I’ve skipped a couple of flights from the journal which were uneventful.
This one, however, was far from that.
Today, we are flying to the Atacama Desert. Home to the world’s largest mining operation for copper, the Atacama Desert is a tough place for flying. Unpredictable weather and crazy high altitude force you to plan carefully and not get distracted.
As I’m looking to get right into the core of the Atacama, I chose to leave La Florida with destination San Pedro de Atacama, a small, VFR-only airfield in the desert. Being VFR-only means you need excellent weather to get there, as there are no electronic aids to help you if the weather turns bad. In this day, the weather was perfect and gave us get views of this insidious landscape.
The rugged terrain of the Atacama
An open pit mine in the Atacama Desert.
Views from the cockpit
Not a drop of water nearby
Possibly the loneliest road in the world? Approach San Pedro de Atacama.
San Pedro de Atacama is in the Antofagasta region in Chile. It’s located at a high-altitude arid plateau, as you can see from the pics above. The town lies at 8000ft, not impossible for the TBM, but quite high for normal people.
