Crescent-shaped sand dunes rise and fall sharply, reaching heights of up to 100 meters (328.08 feet).
The sun beats down from the sky and it is exhausting to walk. Your boots sink deep into the northern Chilean golden sand.
But it is worth it when you reach the ridges of the sand mountains near Copiapó and are rewarded with the sight of a dune landscape that never seems to end.
South America’s answer to the Sahara, the southern part of the Atacama Desert is known as the “Mar de Dunas” with a “sea of dunes” that spans 335 square kilometers (129.34 square miles).
At 550 meters, El Medanoso is one of the highest dunes on the continent and people grab snowboards and glide down the steep slopes, while adrenaline junkies race through the sandy mountains in four-wheel drive cars.
The wind-sculpted wave patterns in the dunes could hardly be more perfect. Most Atacama tourists are drawn to the north of the desert, to San Pedro de Atacama, but it is much quieter some 800 kilometers (497.10 miles) further south.
Torres is a well-known cook in the Atacama region, famed for bringing many lost recipes from ancient desert tribes out of oblivion. She has raised Indigenous regional cuisine to a new level and regularly joins desert tours organized by Roberto’s travel agency.
The Atacama is the driest place on earth beyond the polar regions, says Roberto. It is amazing that not only animals but also 200 endemic plant species can flourish in a place with so little water.
Places where it has never rained
Receiving just 0.5 millimeters of rainfall per year on average, the Atacama receives 50 times less rain than Death Valley in California.
In some regions, rainfall has never been measured since records began, a peculiarity due to the location of the desert, says Roberto.
Stretching 1,200 kilometers, it is squashed between the Andes in the east and the South American ocean coast in the west and is only 160 kilometers wide at most.
While the humid air from the Amazon basin does not make it over the 6,000-metre-high mountains, the cold Humboldt Current from Antarctica prevents rain clouds from forming on the coast.
But there has always been life in the desert. Thousands of years ago, Indigenous groups such as the Atacameños, Aymara and Chinchorros settled here.
In the 15th century, the Atacama was part of the Inca empire, marked by an Inca trail across the region. In the Finca de Chañaral valley, Roberto shows us rock paintings made by the desert tribes.
Spanish colonial rulers paid less attention to the desert, but Chile, Peru and Bolivia were all the more interested, and after gaining independence they fought over the area and its valuable mineral resources in the Saltpetre War (1879-1884). Gold, silver, copper and lithium are still extracted in mines in the south of the Atacama today, as is saltpeter, whose acid was once used to make gunpowder.
Mine kitchen, starry sky
A man who brings together the worlds of mining and food, Fidel Arcancibia began working below ground at the age of eight. Nowadays he takes tourists to disused mines in the small gold mining town of Inca de Oro and shows them mineral and mining techniques in the Chanaral coastal mining area.
He also invites us to his restaurant, where he serves goat stew or charqui dried meat with wheat puree as “mine cuisine.”
We spend the night in a small mountain village called Agua Dulce with the Indigenous Kolla tribe, an area home to 12 families surrounded by majestic mountains.
Iris Suarez shows herbs that she uses for healing. Francisco Cortez is proud of his goat breeding. The villagers talk about traditions and their dying language.
We also learn about the starry sky from astro-tourism guide Carlos Araya, and how the Kolla people used it in their interpretations of life. It is a vivid place, with the Atacama very high up, and even today there is virtually no ambient light.
“We have 320 cloudless nights a year and no major cities nearby, which is why the sky here is pitch black,” says Araya.
Using his mobile professional telescope, Araya also shows us constellations, planets and the moon from an unusual perspective.
“It’s the ideal place to observe the starry sky,” he says. No wonder the world’s largest observatories are located in the region.
