Slowly, please.
The Atacama desert... the perfect place for people who are looking for adventure.
The Atacama desert in Chile is a spectacular place. there is very little vegetation, and it looks like the moon- in fact NASA tested their lunar vehicles here. There are some very big volcanoes. Almost nobody lives there, but there are some small villages on the edge of the desert. Life is hard and everything needs to be imported- food, building materials, and of course, water.
In 1971 it rained in the Atacama. People were amazed because the last time it rained there was 400 years earlier, in 1570! It is the driest place in the world. But in the village of Chungungo they are now getting water from the fog clouds which come in from the sea. Daisy Sasmaya, a villager, says:"We are very happy because now we can have a shower every day, and we can water our plants every week."
The sky over the Atacama desert is hardly ever cloudy, so it is one of the best places in the world to see the stars. The biggest observatory in the world is being built on top of a mountain. "It's the purest air in the world", says journalist Hugh O'Shaughnessy. "At night the sky is incredibly clear- you feel that there is nothing between you and Mars."
