The Atacama Desert is a virtually rainless plateau in South America, covering a 966 km (600 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast of South America, west of the Andes mountains. The rain shadow on the leeward side of the Andes keeps this over 20 million-year-old desert 50 times drier than California's Death Valley. It is the second-driest desert in the world, after the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica.[1] The Atacama occupies 181,300 square kilometers (70,000 mi²) in northern Chile, composed mostly of salt basins (salares), sand, and lava flows.
