Archie Hayes 
The Atacama Desert (Spanish: Desierto de Atacama) is a plateau in South America, covering a 1,000-kilometre strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes mountains. It is, according to NASA, National Geographic and other sources, the driest desert in the world. The Atacama occupies 105,000 square kilometres composed mostly of salt lakes (salares), sand, and felsic lava flows towards the Andes.
