Chile Guide
El Norte Grande
Austerely beautiful, inhospitably arid and overwhelmingly vast, the NORTE GRANDE of Chile – sometimes referred to as the "Far North" – occupies almost a quarter of the country's mainland territory but contains barely five percent of its population. Its single most outstanding feature is the Atacama Desert, stretching all the way down from the Peruvian border for over 1000km; the driest desert in the world, it contains areas where no rainfall has ever been recorded – ever. With a few exceptions the landscape of this desert is not one of Arabian golden sand dunes, but rather of bare rock and gravel spread over a wide pampa or plain, almost shockingly barren – alleviated only by crinkly mountains that glow bronze at twilight. To the west, the plain is lined by a range of coastal hills that drop abruptly to a narrow shelf of land where most of the region's towns and cities – chiefly prosperous Antofagasta, lively Iquique and colourful Arica – are scattered, hundreds of kilometres apart. East, the desert climbs towards the cordillera, which rises to the altiplano: a high, windswept plateau composed of lakes and salt flats ringed with snow-capped volcanoes, forming a fabulous panorama.
Highlights
1 Chuquicamata Visit one of the world's biggest open-pit copper mines near Calama.
2 Museo Arqueológico, San Pedro de Atacama Ogle a shrivelled beauty queen, pre-Columbian drug-taking equipment and more.
3 The Salar de Atacama Explore the vast salt flats of the Atacama Desert, the driest place on Earth – parts of it never, ever see rain.
4 El Tatio At 4300m, pools of boiling water send clouds of steam into the air at the crack of dawn.
5 Humberstone Wander around an abandoned nitrate factory – an eerily well-preserved ghost town stranded in the desert.
6 The Pintados geoglyphs Discover these mysterious, indigenous images, the largest collection of geoglyphs in South America.
7 Parque Nacional Volcán Isluga Trek through a landscape of mineral baths, cobalt lakes, sparkling salt flats and spongy bogs at dizzying altitudes.