Seen in the pages of an atlas, Chile's outline seems aberrant, even fantastical: almost 4000km in length and with an average width of just 180km, the very idea of it seems absurd. Once on Chilean soil, however, you'll be impressed by the country as a physical geographic entity. While the formidable barrier of rock and ice formed by the Andes cuts the country off from Argentina and Bolivia, the Atacama Desert, a thousand-kilometre stretch of parched wasteland, separates it from Peru to the north.
The
Altiplano and the Atacama Desert, the driest in the
world, are located between the cities of Arica and Copiapo.
Made up of rocks, sands, salt flats, lagoons and fuming
geysers, the myriad of colours and forms will take your
breath away.
The barren Atacama Desert, stretching over 1000km into southern Peru, presents an unforgettable, if forbidding, landscape, whose sights number ancient petroglyphs (indigenous rock art), abandoned nitrate ghost towns and a scattering of fertile, fruit-filled oases. Up in the Andes, the vast plateau known as the altiplano, as high and remote as Tibet, encompasses snow-capped volcanoes, bleached-white salt flats, lakes speckled pink with flamingoes, grazing llamas, alpacas and vicuñas, tiny whitewashed churches and native Aymara and Atacameño communities.
San Pedro de Atacama (elevation 2440m) is a precordillera oasis village in northern Chile and lies in the heart of some of northern Chile's most spectacular scenery. A short drive away lies the country's largest salt flat, spotted pink with flamingos and its edges crinkled by volcanoes (symmetrical Licancábur, at 5916m, looms closest to the village). Here too are fields of steaming geysers, a host of otherworldly rock formations and weird layer-cake landscapes.
Tthe desert and craggy mountains
and wide open spaces are a "must" for the real
traveller. |
