Travel to Atacama Desert

The Atacama has been arid for at least 3 million years, making it the oldest desert on Earth. Some weather stations here have never recorded a single drop of rain. Yet this seeming emptiness conceals a landscape of extraordinary complexity: salt flats covering 3,000 square kilometers, volcanic peaks exceeding 5,900 meters, geothermal fields studied as analogues for Mars, and lagoons sustaining species found nowhere else.

Human settlement reaches back over 10,000 years. The Lickanantay, also known as the Atacameño, arrived as nomadic hunters when the region was wetter than it is today. As the land dried, they adapted with extraordinary ingenuity, developing irrigation systems, building fortified pukaras along the San Pedro River, and establishing trade networks stretching across the Andes. Their language, Kunza, was declared extinct in the mid-20th century, but revival programs launched in the early 2020s are working to reconstruct and teach it to younger generations. About half of San Pedro de Atacama’s 11,000 residents identify as Lickanantay, and tourism has become an important force in keeping traditional communities together.