Arid, remote and irresistible: Not much grows in Chile's Atacama desert - except your appreciation of its wonders

EXCLUSIVE Arid, remote and irresistible: Not much grows in Chile's Atacama desert - except your appreciation of its wonders Chile’s tourism numbers rose 84 per cent from 2022 to 2023 Many are choosing the Atacama as one of their stops there Charlotte Lytton explores the world's driest non-polar desert to find out why While there she tries barbecued alpaca and visits the mysterious Moon Valley READ MORE: Eight breathtaking European castles you can sleep in By Charlotte Lytton For The Daily Mail Published: 14:09, 13 August 2024 | Updated: 14:16, 13 August 2024 e-mail View comments The Atacama is the world’s driest non-polar desert – a landscape so vast and arid that Nasa practices Mars expeditions there. So when a carpet of purple flowers began poking through the earth in October 2022, Chile’s president Gabriel Boric Font declared the diverse area a national park, giving it the most protected status the country offers. Brightly coloured blooms aren’t exactly what you’d expect somewhere like this.

But there are more than 200 flower species in the Atacama – a 105,000km sq expanse that turns out to be flecked with every shade. I fly into Calama, the nearest airport, amid an orange-streaked night sky, and over the days that follow I find that the bronze is regularly broken by a pop of lush green grass or a cobalt lagoon. Guanacos, native wild camelids known as the ‘gardeners’ of this flowering desert, nibble away, while tagua cornudas (or horned coots) squabble in.