Atacama

The Atacama Desert covers a 1,000-kilometer stretch of northern Chile between the Pacific coast and the Andean cordillera, holding the distinction of the driest non-polar desert in the world — some weather stations have recorded essentially no rainfall in their entire instrumental history. The town of San Pedro de Atacama sits at 2,408 meters in the desert's eastern interior, serving as the base for nearly all tourist visits to the region. Despite a permanent population of only about 5,000, San Pedro receives hundreds of thousands of annual visitors drawn to the surreal landscapes within an easy drive: salt flats, otherworldly rock formations, geothermal geysers at 4,300 meters, brilliantly colored lagoons stocked with three flamingo species, and the world's clearest dark-sky stargazing.

The combination of altitude (the entire region sits between 2,400 and 5,000 meters), aridity, and clean atmosphere makes Atacama the planet's premier ground-based astronomy site. The European Southern Observatory's ALMA array (66 radio telescopes spread across the Chajnantor Plateau at 5,000m) and Paranal Observatory (with the four VLT optical telescopes) are both nearby and the most productive astronomical sites in the world. Tourist-grade observatories near San Pedro — Space Obs, the ALMA visitor center on weekends, and various small-tour operators with 12-inch and 16-inch telescopes — let visitors see Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings, and the Milky Way's structure in extraordinary detail.

What you do in Atacama is a curated rotation of half-day tours across the surrounding landscape. The Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) is the standard sunset destination — eroded salt-and-sand formations that look genuinely lunar. The Tatio Geysers at 4,320m require a brutal 4am wake-up but reward with steam columns rising at sunrise. The Salar de Atacama (smaller than Bolivia's Uyuni but with flamingo colonies and the Laguna Chaxa lagoon) is the half-day flamingo destination. The Lagunas Altiplánicas (Miscanti and Miñiques, both above 4,000m with snow-capped volcano backdrops), the floating Cejar lagoon (so dense with salt you float effortlessly like the Dead Sea), and the rainbow-banded Rainbow Valley (Valle Arcoíris) round out the standard 4-5 day visit. Most travelers come from Santiago and combine Atacama with Bolivia's Uyuni salt flats via the famous 3-day border-crossing jeep tour.