The driest place on earth – The Tales of Two Travelling Turtles

The driest place on earth

Around San Pedro de Atacama

The Atacama desert, high up in the Andes just south of the border between Chile and Peru, is the driest place on earth apart from parts of the poles.

The skies are incredibly clear, and the night sky is totally filled with thousands stars, with the Milky Way easily visible. This is the normal thing in the Andes. So much so that the Incas saw the Milky Way as a river, and they identified constellations within it by the areas with fewer stars – the shadows, if you like. In the photo, above me to the left is Yacana the llama and to the right is Yutu the bird. (Yutu looks more like a turbot, but the Incas weren’t to know that!)

But the area isn’t just desert – it’s also surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes and has the highest geyser field in the world, with hot water emerging at over 4,000 m up. It’s an extraordinary part of the world.

…by Chris. (And you can see more, much better, pictures taken by my good friend Carsten on his flickr page here)