The Puna de Atacama, or Atacama Plateau, one of the most extreme places on Earth—11,000-foot-high tableland (the Tibetan Plateau is higher), formed 15 million years ago when the floor of the Pacific crashed into South America and the Andes shot some 20,000 feet into the sky. The great range left oceans trapped inland, dried and formed vast salt flats, Salinas Grandes in NW of Argentina. It’s the world’s second driest spot, 50 times more arid than Death Valley, and people still live on these salt flats and work minerals from the barren land.
The Quechua, indigenous and adapted to the altitude, have mined bricks of salt here for centuries, packing them across the Andes on ancient trade routes that wind through the mountains as far north as La Paz, Bolivia. But with the rise of the battery-powered car, lithium is quickly proving the most valuable deposit on the flats.
Hardy travelers which adore the remoteness (Antarctica, Patagonia, Baffin Island types) can join Chilean outfitter Explora at the Hotel de Larache, its ten-year-old lodge in the desert oasis of San Pedro. Visitors can walk, bike, or drive the Salinas Grandes by day or, even better, under a luminous night sky.