The Blooming Desert - Another of nature's miracles, this is a sporadic phenomenon which takes place toward the end of the Southern Hemisphere winter, after an unusually heavy rainfall across the region. The excess water transforms the normally arid landscape into a sumptuous spring garden, bringing to life the millions of seeds, bulbs and insects that lie dormant beneath the surface of the desert, in a plethora of shapes and hues.
The first postcard from Chile, sent by Hernan. Hernan added this, "... the desert is the driest in the world. In the past, a train network used to cross this desert (but it was suspended in the early 70's)
This is from Wikipedia : The Atacama Desert is a virtually rainless plateau in South America, covering a 600-mile (1,000 km) strip of land on the Pacific coast of South America, west of the Andes mountains. The Atacama desert is, according to NASA, National Geographic and many other publications, the driest desert in the world. The rain shadow on the leeward side of the Chilean Coast Range, as well as a coastal inversion layer created by the cold offshore Humboldt Current, keep this over 20 million-year-old desert 50 times drier than California's Death Valley.[citation needed] The Atacama occupies 40,600 square miles (105,000 km2) in northern Chile, composed mostly of salt basins (salares), sand, and lava flows.
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