Atacama Desert in the top three tourist locations in Chile. The specially commissioned ESO hotel is reserved for astronomers. About 80 geysers occur in a valley about 80 km from the town of San Pedro de Atacama. They are closer to the town of Chiu Chiu. The Baños de Puritama are rock pools which are 37 miles from the geysers. Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert () is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1000-km (600-mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes mountains. The Atacama desert is one of the driest places in the world (the
War of the Pacific in the Andes. For the first five months the war played out in a naval campaign, as Chile struggled to establish a sea-based resupply corridor for its forces in the world’s driest desert. In February 1878, Bolivia imposed a new tax on a Chilean mining company (“Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta”, CSFA) despite Bolivian express warranty in the 1874 Boundary Treaty that it would not increase taxes on Chilean persons or industries for 25 years. Chile protested and solicited to submit it to mediation, but Bolivia refused and considered it a subject of Bolivia’s courts. Chile insisted and