The world’s driest desert
We bid farewell to Cedric in Santiago, and continued our journey northwards to the Atacama desert. The flight form Santiago was quick and smooth, and after 2h30, we touched down in Calama. Luckily for us, the entire entry process was efficient, and we were on our way within 30 minutes. From Calama, the biggest airport in the Atacama desert, we drove 1h30 to San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro de Atacama is the most popular tourist destination, and therefore also has the accompanying infrastructure (hotels, restaurants, etc.).
We arrived at out hotel, and quickly noticed the fantastic view. At a height of 2,400 meters above sea level, we admired the volcanos that rose 5’800 meters above the desert. The Atacama desert, considered to be the world’s driest place, has on average around 345 days without clouds, and gets rain a couple of days a year. Next to the unique landscapes, it is also incredibly popular amongst astronomy enthusiast due to its great view of the southern night sky.
We had a quick, but not very good, lunch at the hotel and started off our afternoon tour. The first stop was the Moon valley; a valley whose landscape draws comparisons to that of the moon. The valley offered some very impressive views. Salt that crystallises itself out of the rocks on the floor makes the area look snow covered. This, combined with the unusual rock formations and sand dunes, made for a very captivating landscape. Subsequently, we drove to a set of petroglyphs, rock inscriptions that were in the area. Although they were cool to see, they were not particularly impressive. We ended the tour with a sundowner drinks over a valley that draws similarity to the landscape of Mars.
We ended the day with one of the highlights of our stay in the Atacama Desert; an astronomy tour. We left the hotel at 2240 to a location that was absent of any artificial light. The guide then started walking us through what we could see on the night sky. From specific stars, to different constellations, I had never witnessed such a clear view of the stars. After a quick break, we then had a chance to observe clusters, nebulae, and binary star systems through a number of telescopes. It was incredibly fascinating and impressive to have such a unobstructed and clear view of the stars.
After a short night of sleep, we continued the next day with a tour of the Andes and the mountain lagoons. We left the hotel for a set of lagoons that were about 100km away. At a height of 4200 meters above sea level, we were able to admire two mountain lakes situated amongst the nearby volcanos. The altitude was clearly noticeable, as even light physical activity resulted in heavy breathing and slow movements. On our way to the place, we also were lucky to witness groups of Llamas and Vicunas roaming free in the area. Together with the Guanacos we saw in Patagonia, we have now seen three out of the four Camelids in South America (with Alpacas being the only ones missing). After the mountain lagoons, we ended the day with a stop at the Atacama Salt Planes, were we also caught a number of Flamingos feeding in the area.
The Atacama Desert is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the world, as well as the only true desert to receive less precipitation than the polar deserts and the largest fog desert in the world. Both regions have been used as experimentation sites on Earth for Mars expedition simulations. The Atacama Desert occupies 105,000 km2 (41,000 sq mi), or 128,000 km2 (49,000 sq mi) if the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included. Most of the desert is composed of stony terrain, salt lakes (salares), sand, and felsic lava that flows towards the Andes.
The desert owes its extreme aridity to a constant temperature inversion due to the cool north-flowing Humboldt ocean current and to the presence of the strong Pacific anticyclone. The most arid region of the Atacama Desert is situated between two mountain chains (the Andes and the Chilean Coast Range) of sufficient height to prevent moisture advection from either the Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean, a two-sided rain shadow. Despite modern views of Atacama Desert as fully devoid of vegetation, in pre-Columbian and Colonial times a large flatland area known as Pampa del Tamarugal was a woodland but demand for firewood associated with silver and saltpeter mining in the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in widespread deforestation.
Source: Wikipedia.org under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It occupies a long, narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Chile covers an area of 756,096 square kilometers (291,930 sq mi), with a population of 17.5 million as of 2017. Chile is the southernmost country in the world, the closest to Antarctica, and share land borders with Peru to the north, Bolivia to the north-east, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far south. Chile also controls the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Isla Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas, and Easter Island in Oceania. It also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometers (480,000 sq mi) of Antarctica under the Chilean Antarctic Territory. The country’s capital and largest city is Santiago, and its national language is Spanish.
Spain conquered and colonized the region in the mid-16th century, replacing Inca rule, but failing to conquer the independent Mapuche who inhabited what is now south-central Chile. In 1818, after declaring independence from Spain, Chile emerged in the 1830s as a relatively stable authoritarian republic. In the 19th century, Chile saw significant economic and territorial growth, ending Mapuche resistance in the 1880s and gaining its current northern territory in the War of the Pacific (1879–83) after defeating Peru and Bolivia. In the 20th century up to the 1970s Chile saw a process of democratization, rapid population growth and urbanization and increasing reliance on exports from copper mining for its economy. During the 1960s and 1970s, the country experienced severe left-right political polarization and turmoil. This development culminated with the 1973 Chilean coup d’état that overthrew Salvador Allende’s democratically elected left-wing government and instituted a 16-year right-wing military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that left more than 3,000 people dead or missing. The regime ended in 1990 after a referendum in 1988 and was succeeded by a center-left coalition which ruled until 2010.
Chile is a developing country with a high-income economy and ranks 43rd in the Human Development Index. It is among the most economically and socially stable nations in South America, leading Latin America in rankings of competitiveness, per capita income, globalization, state of peace, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption. Chile also ranks high regionally in sustainability of the state, democratic development, and has the lowest homicide rate in the Americas after Canada. It is a founding member of the United Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Pacific Alliance, and joined the OECD in 2010.
Reference: Wikipedia.org under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile
