It's an inspirational adage that water can cut through the mightiest mountain. It’s also a geological fact. Some of South America’s driest, flattest, and positively rockiest landmarks are shaped by water over millennia, the slow drip of rain and dew eating away at the thickest slabs of granite and limestone.
Exploring the Terrestrial Red Planet
If you’re not interested in entering the Space X lottery to colonize Mars, heading to the Atacama Desert is your best bet to explore the red planet. The desert stretches 41,000 sq-mi (105,000 sq-km) across northern Chile and is the driest non-polar desert in the world. It averages around 0.6 in (15 mm) of rain a year, its aridity caused by the desert being caught between two mountain ranges and two competing air currents. With erratic weather due to climate change, the dryness can be even more pronounced.
Despite being famously dry, the desert is not devoid of life. Thyme covers the red rocks. Cactuses bloom after sparse rains. Flamingos crowd to the salt lagoons of Salar de Atacama. San Pedro de Atacama is the desert’s travel basecamp, where you can head on day excursions to El Tatio to watch geysers blast 164 ft (50 m) in the air or Valle de la Luna to gaze upon the jagged spires that give the desert its otherworldly appeal. Speaking of space, there are few better spots on the planet to stargaze. Nearly the entire desert is a dark sky preserve, guaranteeing jaw-dropping views of the Milky Way each night.
Standing on a Salty Mirror
There is no middle ground between dry and wet in the Salar de Uyuni. Either these white flats, famous for their hexagonal salt crystallizations, are bone dry or completely flooded. Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat covering 3,900 sq-mi (10,000 sq-km) in southwestern Bolivia. In prehistoric times, the area was covered with saline lakes, which dried up around 40,000 years ago, leaving behind a flat, salty crust. They’re so flat that NASA uses them to calibrate their satellites. But they’re most striking for their reflective quality. When it rains here, mostly in January and February, brine covers the landscape and transforms the earth into a perfect reflection of the sky. If you’ve ever wanted to walk through the stars, get to Uyuni and take a stroll through the liquid heavens.
Gazing into the Depths of the Earth
Grand Canyon, eat your heart out. Twice as deep as its North American cousin and 43 mi (70 km) long, Colca Canyon north of Arequipa in southeastern Peru is a sight to behold. The waters of the Colca River carved the canyon over millions of years, aided by tectonic activity and glacial movement during the last Ice Age. Today, this is the place to go to spot rare Andean condors and hike to breathtaking lookouts where the view down goes on and on and on. You can also spot Inca mummies and 6,000-year-old rock art, giving plenty of historical reasons to explore Colca Canyon beyond the views. Still, the views are more than enough reason to visit and proof of how water is nature’s greatest sculptor.
You might say that Aren was destined to become a globetrotter after his family took him to Germany two times before he was four. If that wasn’t enough, a term spent in Sweden as a young teenager and a trek across Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand confirmed that destiny. An independent writer, director, and film critic, Aren has travelled across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. His favourite travel experience was visiting the major cities of Japan’s largest island, Honshu, but his love for food, drink, and film will take him anywhere that boasts great art and culture.
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