If saw, visited and experimented already Sahara desert or the Death Valley inU.S. you must have been impressed about the tough conditions of life there, due to the extreme lack of moisture. Nevertheless, the world’d driest region is the Atacama Desert, lieing on the Pacific Coast of Chile, and bordering also Peru and Bolivia.

atacama_desertmapatacamadesert

I found Atacama desert amazing and worth to be visited. It really looks like the Planet Mars. It would be something really extraordinary feeling yourself like being on the Mars, but I don’t think you can during this life. Much easier, go and visit Atacama Desert, the soil and the climate is very similar to Mars! NASA performs tests of its extraterestrial vehicles in the Atacama Desert. There are more telescopes in the Atacama Desert (there are no raining clouds there!).

Atacama Desert is a 1000 km strip between the Andes and the Pacific coasts. In the Pacific the Humboldt stream is cold and produces no evaporation. On the other side, the Andes with peaks reaching 6 000 meters, don’t let the clouds coming from the continent. Thus, in some parts of Atacama falled no water drops between 1570 and 1971! In some parts of the desert it rains every 6-10 years due to El Nino, and the desert literally blossoms. On the coast, the fogg (camanchuca) facilitates the apparition of algae, lichens and cacti. Otherwise, the life is not posible, and nevertheless the man has been populated the area since old times.

Valle de la Luna, Atacama-W?ste, Chile

In the oasis of San Pedro de Atacama there is a village with 2000 inhabitants having a museum with some amazing artefacts, e.g. mummified bodies which are 7000 years old( the Chinchorro mummies). That means much earlier than the Egyptians! Inca Empire also left behind some traces, climbing the mountains and making sacrifices at 6000 meters heights.

Atacama Desert is rich on cooper, silver, gold and nitrates and caused a war between the neighboring countries. In the late XVIIIth and the early XIXth century were build more towns for mining the nitrates, and all these towns have been abandoned due the discovery of synthetic nitrates. Thus, there are many spectacular ghost towns in the Atacama Desert (Chacambuco, Santa Laura etc).

Besides, there are also other things to do and to admire in the Atacama Desert: emerald green lakes, geysers, active volcanoes, flamingos. Be very careful on the huge differences of temperatures between day (30 degrees Celsius) and night (- 15 degrees Celsius).

Very soon, the Dakar Rally (organized this year in Argentina and Chile) will go through Atacama Desert, and this is considered to be the most challenging part of the entire Rally, a major test for cars and people.

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