“Towards Atacama, near the deserted coast, you see a land without men, where there is not a bird, not a beast, nor a tree, nor any vegetation”

Alonso de Ercilla, in La Araucana 1569

The driest place in the world – Atacama Desert. Atacama desert is located in South America between Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean in northern Chile. It is made of salt basins, lava flows and sand. It is over 20 million years old. Atacama desert is almost sterile because Andes blocked all moisture pass to Atacama. On some places in Atacama wheather station never received rain. By the evidence in Atacama there was no more important rainfall from 1570 to 1971. Even Mountains that reaches over 6500 meters are glacier free.

Some regions in Atacama gets some marine fog which is sufficient to support some algaes, lichens and cacti, but other dry parts are compared to Mars (Atacama is used for filming some Mars Scenes for movies). In 2003 in Science Magazine scientist published tests used by Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars landers for life detection, and they were unable to detect any signs of life in Atacama soil. In the middle of desert there is oasis, at about 2000 m above sea level. Oasis is home for village San Pedro de Atacama which is very popular tourist destination. Because of high altitude, and nearly non existent clouds, lack of light polution and radio interference Atacama is one of the best places for astronomical observations. Atacama desert has world largest natural supply of Sodium Nitrate which was mined at enormous ammounts until early 1940s. Now across the desert there is more then 170 abandoned nitrate mining towns, because of invention of synthetic nitrate in Germany. Some of ghost towns are Chacabuco, Humberstone, Puelma, Santa Laura… Across the desert runs Pan American highway.

Some of pictures are from http://www.atacamaphoto.com/ and amazing photographer Gerhard Hüdepohl.