The dryest place on earth.

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In Northern Chile, after crossing beautiful Bolivia (see last post) MissionVanGo rambled across the driest place on earth which is the Atacama Desert. There is so little rainfall (some weather stations there have not recoded a single drop of rain for decades) that much of the desert is completely sterile. Even the cluster of border crossing station buildings looked like a ghost town and I had to wander through the ramshackle complex with broken chairs strewn about calling out in a loud voice before I saw a living being even there. It was crossing this barren place that we had our first flat tire and less than two hours later ran out of gas for the first time. The Atacama Desert was of course beautiful in it's own way. Here are a few pictures from the road.

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Photos

Those are not shadows on the mountain.
It had nearly black veins running through it which looked very unnatural.

Stars in a perfect black sky.
The camera couldn't capture it AT ALL but the Milky Way actually carves a bright swath across the sky when you are in the middle of the desert.