Atacama Desert
One of the driest places on Earth, Chile’s Atacama Desert is an otherworldly experience.
Chile’s Atacama Desert is one of the most inhospitable places on the planet a land where sand stretches into salt, volcanoes take their place alongside snow-capped mountains, and the wind and ghost towns are kept company by occasional lagoons.
At the centre of it all is San Pedro, the oasis settlement at the heart of the Atacama community, 11,000 years in the making. The locals mastered this brutal terrain, terracing the mountains, rearing llama and alpaca, and harvesting figs, pumpkins, corn and other produce. Today, San Pedro’s narrow dirt streets are lined with adobe houses, restaurants, hotels and shops a leaping-off point for ventures into the great beyond.
Nearby, the badlands mutate into a lunar landscape at the aptly named Moon Valley. Here, the great Andes and the Atacama desert sculpted by the elements over millions of years are kissed by the fading sun, bursting into colour 2,550 metres (8,366 feet) above sea level.
Further afield, at Death Valley, the desert earns its stripes, hurtling humongous dunes heavenward alongside restless mountains; rock upon rock upon sand. A brutal expanse rolled out towards the horizon, also goes by the name Mars Valley, where many try their hands at sandboarding, mountain biking and trekking.
From space, the journey continues to hell, with the geyser fields of El Tatio where steam rises from scorched earth keeping the chubby viscachas (cousins of the chinchilla), camelid vicuñas and emu-like rheas at bay. The smoking wasteland is anything but, sprouting giant cacti and yaretas, which ooze like giant broccoli from the sand. Dialling back the intensity, the local hot springs boast mineral-rich waters, mud baths and mini-waterfalls.
Soon after, the earth unfolds into an open expanse of white ground, interspersed with thin pools reflecting the mountains in the distance. This is Salar de Atacama, the country’s largest salt flat, home to numerous species of flamingo and part of the Los Flamencos National Reserve. At 4,200 meters (13,780 feet) above sea level, this is serious headache territory, but nothing a float in the turquoise Cejar Lagoon can’t fix.
At Rainbow Valley a natural solarium, where the stars are laid bare by the lightless night hills of red, green and yellow compete for glory. Scattered across the dry landscape are a handful of ruins from past Atacaman civilisations, such as the pre-Incan; hilltop Quitor Fort; and Lasana, a fortress built along the Loa River.
While the region’s petroglyphs, or rock art, date back 10,000 years, among its more unlikely cultural treasures are its various ghost towns left in the wake of the former saltpeter industry, which for 60 years drew workers from across Chile, Peru and Bolivia. The industry, spread over 200 works, sprouted its own Pampino culture, leaving behind empty, creaky and clanging towns, such as Humberstone, which has been converted into an open-air museum, centred around a restored (allegedly haunted) theatre.