It is very hard country. Dry country. Stony country. Arid country. Barren country. A barely hospitable landscape. Sand and grit, rock and pebble. Desert mountains and empty seaward lowlands. Not semi-arid. For vast tracts there is no vegetation. A single very hardy thistle of spiky grass, or rare cactus, startles. It is so ugly it is almost beautiful. The Peruvian desert, that includes most of the nation's western flank between the Andes Mountains and Pacific Ocean, is not of any exceptional width, between 100km and 200km. But it is a long land of nigh nothing, a moonscape, running near the length of the country, 3,000km, 10 percent of the nation. A few tatty towns dot the local base of the raised spine along the entire continent: from heavy snow and 'Swiss lakes' in deep-south Patagonia northwards
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