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
Flora of the Sonoran Desert absent on the California side of the Colorado River. Desert Holly ("Atriplex hymenelytra") can tolerate even the hottest and driest sites. The area where two vegetation types border, overlap, and transition is called an ecotone. The ecotone between the hotter, drier Colorado Desert and that of the relatively cooler and wetter Arizona Upland occurs from Parker, Arizona southeast to near Phoenix, then south to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Density of vegetation gradually diminishes moving from the Arizona Upland into the Colorado Desert proper. can be found with stems climbing through shrubs and other vegetation, producing "spectacular" floral displays on