El Desierto

We've been driving through the desert for just over a week now and the landscape has changed pretty dramatically since being in central Chile.

The Atacama desert is one of the driest places on earth. There are occasionally light showers on the coast, but inland it never rains. The owner of one hostel we stayed in told us that most of the older generation (60-70yr olds) in the town had never seen rain!

The landscape is ever changing from huge sand dunes, to salt plains, to high mountains, to barren flat lands. It really looks like you've landed on Mars coming here.

The big cities are always on the coast and seem quite prosperous due to high concentration of mining here. Hence prices here are not cheap.

Ancient geoglyphs scatter the hillsides throughout the Atacama. Pretty interesting that no one really knows who made them and what their purpose is and because there is no rain to wash them away they simply remain.