I did not know Chile had a desert until I found myself in it, while motorcycling down to Ushuaia. It was incredible - a Mars landscape, as far as the eye could

I did not know Chile had a desert until I found myself in it, while motorcycling down to Ushuaia. It was incredible - a Mars landscape, as far as the eye could see. We would pick up pallets by the side of the road and make a fire at night. Desolate, and of course amazing stars at night. You could ride 120mph quite easily. That photo of the road going straight to the horizon is what it looked like, the whole way through. Also, running into el Mano del Desierto was just surreal. A Buddha hand, just standing in the desert?! Gas stations were plentiful enough, and clean, as I remember. We rode over some small mountains to see Salar de Uyuni, rather than pay the fee for Americans to enter Bolivia, which was expensive at the time. There we ran out of food and water, and barely made it back over the border into Chile before running out of gas. Oil workers rescued us and gassed us up, declining payment on the grounds that this was hilarious. We went to a little town which was an oasis and crashed in a hotel for a couple of days. The south of the country is much greener, and full of vineyards, which they are very proud of. Around the middle they share mountains with Argentina, and the Mendoza wine region, which produces pretty much all South American wine. Any odds, I can definitely recommend visiting Atacama.