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
Desert sparrow Desert sparrow The desert sparrow ("Passer simplex") is a species of bird in the sparrow family Passeridae, found in the Sahara Desert of northern Africa. A similar bird, Zarudny's sparrow, is found in Central Asia and was historically recognised as a subspecies of the desert sparrow, but varies in a number of ways and is now recognised as a separate species by BirdLife International, the IOC World Bird List, and the "Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive". The desert sparrow has two subspecies which occur in some of driest parts of the Sahara Desert in northern Africa. This