Atacama Desert: The Ancient, Alien Landscape of Northern Chile

My mom lived there for years when I was in high school and college. My wife (girlfriend at the time) and I visited my Mom in Antofagasta. We took a bus from Antofagasta to San Pedro de Atacama for a few days. At some point before arriving in San Pedro, we were the last people on the bus. The driver pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of this desert. No other people or cars or anything in sight. He motioned for us to get off the bus. He was increasingly loud and insistent. My wife speaks Spanish but his accent was thick and the bus's engine was loud so she had a hard time understanding him. I was certain we were going to be robbed and potentially murdered. But, he got off first and walked over to a big rock and went around it on a small ledge. I peeked around the edge of this boulder and he was making the universal camera/photo gesture. Ahead of us was the Valle de la Luna [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valle_de_la_Luna_(Chile)]. The sun was setting and it was one of the most beautiful sights I've seen in my life. After we arrived at San Pedro, he made sure we got to the hostel and we shared an ice cream in the central plaza with his children.

Interesting place in many ways. Just a few days ago it was reported: "Vast patches of glassy rock in Chilean desert likely created by ancient exploding comet." [https://phys.org/news/2021-11-vast-patches-glassy-chilean-an...]

"Around 12,000 years ago, something scorched a vast swath of the Atacama Desert in Chile with heat so intense that it turned the sandy soil into widespread slabs of silicate glass.... Fields of dark green or black glass occur within a corridor stretching about 75 kilometers.... The analysis found minerals called zircons that had thermally decomposed to form baddeleyite. That mineral transition typically happens in temperatures in excess of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit...."

Geology PDF: [https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-pdf/doi...]

This article doesn't talk about another really interesting aspect of the Atacama. Many observatories are set up there, as it's one of the best places in the world for stargazing, and

The reason it's so good is due to the lack of clouds most times, and the extreme dryness of the air as the article pointed out.

It's definitely on my list of places to visit!

Patricio Guzman's 'Nostalgia for the Light' is a wonderful documentary 'about' Atacama. It cuts between the scientists using the telescopes and a collection of women who have been scouring the desert for fragments of the bodies of loved ones discarded during the pinochet regime. Both are using the space to probe history, just very different kinds and at very different scales. Very powerful and instructive exploration of the (dead) body, grief, and the necessity of 'witnessing'. Highly recommend it to everyone here!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Light

One of the most impressive things you get to see there is the Flora and Fauna around the San Pedro de Atacama area.

It is so beautiful to see the life thriving in such an hostile environment, at around 3.000 MASL. It gives you a unique perspective about nature.

I did not know Chile had a desert until I found myself in it, while motorcycling down to Ushuaia.

It was incredible - a Mars landscape, as far as the eye could see. We would pick up pallets by the side of the road and make a fire at night. Desolate, and of course amazing stars at night.

You could ride 120mph quite easily. That photo of the road going straight to the horizon is what it looked like, the whole way through.

Also, running into el Mano del Desierto was just surreal. A Buddha hand, just standing in the desert?!

Gas stations were plentiful enough, and clean, as I remember.

We rode over some small mountains to see Salar de Uyuni, rather than pay the fee for Americans to enter Bolivia, which was expensive at the time. There we ran out of food and water, and barely made it back over the border into Chile before running out of gas. Oil workers rescued us and gassed us up, declining payment on the grounds that this was hilarious.

We went to a little town which was an oasis and crashed in a hotel for a couple of days.

The south of the country is much greener, and full of vineyards, which they are very proud of. Around the middle they share mountains with Argentina, and the Mendoza wine region, which produces pretty much all South American wine.

Any odds, I can definitely recommend visiting Atacama.

Also recently written to be a dumping ground for all the worlds leftover cheap clothing. https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/latin-america/chiles-desert-...

Adding to the alienness, you have a fossil whale graveyard in the desert. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26343894

Great stuff, love seeing this kind of content on the front page. Dry Valleys are fascinating as well, this is likely to send me into a rabbit hole of reading about arid locations…

Just jotting down a few meta comments about the article itself simply because I find writing/storytelling to be fascinating and worth studying. Overall I found the content quite engaging. The ads mixed throughout really do detract from the experience. Here I am about to get immersed in the desert and then a laundry detergent ad shows up front and center. I'm not sure how I feel about how they mixed in photos without context. E.g. that mano del desierto sculpture was striking. I wanted to learn more. But maybe the unexpectedness of the photos works well?

Relatedly, "Mountain of Clothing in Chilean Desert Disastrous for Environment": https://weather.com/science/environment/video/mountain-of-cl...

Question: wouldn’t the Mount Everest be among the driest places on earth because it’s top is above the clouds?

I encourage everybody to go there, it is amazing. And Salar de Uyuni is close to there. Just amazing.

Have been to the Argentinian side of Atacama desert a few years ago, it also has impressive landscapes!