Million-year-old rock formations, salt flats and sand occupy much of Chile's 600-mile-long Atacama Desert. Located between the Pacific Coastal Mountains and the Andes, it is without question the driest place in the world. In many locations, there's never been a drop of rain. And yet, there is life here, and a marvelous beauty created by the power of nature and an accidental geography. As word gets out and travel becomes easier, more and more people are coming from all over the world to see the Atacama.

I joined a busload of touring Americans on the road from the airport at Calama to San Pedro de Atacama. When the bus stopped in the middle of a seemingly barren landscape, we all trooped out to look at a stone cross and a small brass plaque marking the grave of Stanley Hollingsworth, an Oxford geologist. He died in London but he so loved the Atacama that he asked to be buried on this high, windblown plateau between the Salt Mountains and the Andes in the shadow of the gently smoking Volcano Lascar. There is a metal box on the site, containing seashells, notes and small remembrances. I put my card in there ‹ pointless, but it made me feel connected. I hadn't even begun to explore its wonders, but the Atacama had already cast its spell.

The two-hour bus ride brought us to one of the high desert's oases ‹ San Pedro de Atacama. Archeologists say the site has been inhabited for 10,000 years. Today, 5000 people live there in stone and adobe houses, raise crops using water from a small, Andes-born river, and support a growing tourism. Located close to many of the Atacama's most famous sights, the town is a perfect base for touring.

When you make it all the way to Chile, flying to the capital, Santiago, then back up to the northern desert quarter, you want to make the best use of time and energy to see all you can. Rather than coping with distances and arrangements, we had chosen to stay at one of San Pedro's all-inclusive small hotels ‹ Terrantai, a place of peace and informality. All on the ground floor, the rooms are accessed along silent pathways that twist between stone walls open to the sky.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner offered tasty choices and the Americans bonded, taking meals together and sharing the all-included excursions. The most important inclusion was the hotel bus and our guide, Nelson Hall, locally born and raised and of Welsh heritage (thus the non-Spanish name).

Nelson, a devout environmentalist, knew history, geology, Atacaman legends and all the flora and fauna. Even in this driest of deserts, we saw both of those ‹ cardon cactus that only grow at an altitude between 3000 and 3600 feet, and a green grove of carob trees planted by the government because their multitude of skinny roots can go deep into the earth to find water. We saw llamas, guanacos and vicunas, members of the camel family who incredibly survive by getting sustenance from small clumpy plants that look like rocks. Once, we saw two circling condors.

"To catch the geysers at their best, we have to beat the sun," Nelson had instructed. It was still dark when, clad in sweaters, jackets, hats and gloves, we boarded the bus at 5 a.m. Nights are chilly in San Pedro even when the days are warm, and we were bound for an uphill, switchbacked run to El Tatio Geysers. At 14,000 feet, in the highest geothermal field in the world, it was cold at the break of dawn and it was gorgeous. Flanked by volcanic peaks, backlit by the low early sun, steam roiled across the valley. We walked across a rough bed of hardened lava from a long-ago eruption. Countless fumarole vents bubbled hot water and spewed steam across the otherworldly landscape. More than 80 geysers erupt here at regular intervals ‹ some shooting as high as 23 feet. The pressure builds when icy underground water meets volcanic magma and you hear the geysers rumbling just before they blow. Imagine walking across the earth's crust among those gushing geysers and billowing clouds of steam! (But walk cautiously and don't touch the 185-degree water. Careless people have been burned.)

When the sun got a little higher, we went back to the bus. Nelson set up a table laden with breakfast sandwiches, lemon cake and plenty of hot coffee. He heated a carton of milk for making cocoa by setting it in a small fumarole. It was steaming in a minute.

Joining a slow procession of cars and vans going down the mountain in low gear, we returned to a warm day in San Pedro. Eventually, we got back on the bus. Nelson had promised us pink flamingos at the Salt Flats.

The Atacama Salt Lake covers over 1150 square miles and is 1450 feet deep in some places. But it is almost entirely underground. Here and there, lagoons emerge from a scabby white mantle of salt that seems to go on forever. We went out to the lagoons for a look at the flamingos, following a single file path through a crusty jagged surface that nobody would want to try to walk on. It looked like the surface of Mars ‹ only rougher. The flamingos spend their days wading through the shallow lagoons, pecking at brine shrimp and microscopic algae.

They are big, beautiful birds, especially when they tuck up their long legs and take wing. But the ones I saw at the Chaxa Lagoon had only a subtle pink on their heads, necks and wing tips ‹ nothing like the garish, plastic birds that used to decorate front yards in Florida. It was late afternoon when we went to the Valley of the Moon. (Sunrise for Tatio geysers. Sunset for Moon Valley.) Twenty-three million years ago, the earth in this place was raised and folded by movements in its core. Sand and wind erode it further every day. Beyond a striated escarpment shaped like a gigantic battleship, is a high ridge from which you can view the huge, arid expanse of Moon Valley and the peaks of three surrounding mountain ranges. The best time to go is when the setting sun produces magical color changes ‹ pink to red to rust. And the place to see it from is the high ridge. But the only way to get there is by climbing what is called the Great Sand Dune.

Trouble was ‹ the sand was fine and loose ‹ and steep. The strong, the young and the experienced climbers among us slogged on up, but you can't help sliding back down with every step and some of us fell behind. I got up pretty high until I came upon a convenient rock and sat down to think about just admiring the view from where I was. Then, like a mountain goat, down came Nelson.

"Follow me," he said. "There's another lookout across the dune. You don't have to go to the top." We were happy to comply. And the view was magnificent.

From where we stood, we also had a perfect view of the mystical volcano Licancabur that is actually on the border of Chile and Bolivia. At 20,000 feet, its perfect pyramid presides over the whole San Pedro area and can be seen from almost any location. The native Atacamenos worshipped the Spirit of Licancabur for centuries. When the conquering Incas arrived, they tried to placate its fiery spirit by carrying heavy boulders up its slopes, leaving them as offerings. Today, the volcano is no longer active, but none can ignore its looming presence.

People have always lived in the Atacama. The earliest human remains discovered in the San Pedro area go back to 11,000 B.C. Much more recent is the fortress of Quitor, which spreads strategically high above a river gorge that was an ancient llama caravan route. Taken from its original builders by the Incas in the 12th Century and again by the Spanish 300 years later, the fort has been preserved as an evocative ruin. There was no one in charge at the site when we got there and we depended on Nelson to find the way up the mountainside and give us a picture of what it was like when people lived in those now-silent, roofless rooms and Quitor had to be defended from invaders.

The ruins of Tulor are an easy excursion, but they make you think. Once there was an oasis there, but now it's flat desert in all directions - though the ever-present Licancabur still presides on the horizon. Settled in 400 B.C., Tulor was abandoned when the river dried up ‹ in about 300 A.D. The desert advanced inexorably, completely covering the site. A Jesuit priest/archeologist, Gustave Le Paige, discovered the village under the sand in 1956, but only about 1/4th of Tulor was excavated. No one really knows how much more is out there. The remaining few half-buried buildings that we could see from a raised wooden platform were made of adobe and connected by passageways. We stood there, a little sad but fascinated, watching the persistent wind blow covering sand that once preserved these ruins and is now destroying the excavations. I hope that one day, the conservation of Tulor will begin again. At least, now people will know what lies beneath the sand.

There's a legend that says that when God finished creating the world, he chose to put all the wonders he had left over into Chile. This country of extremes is the slender finger (only an average 150 miles wide) that runs halfway down the western edge of South America from the desert North to Cape Horn and Antarctica. In between are mountains and volcanoes, lakes and glaciers and a coastline of almost 3000 miles ‹ and the Atacama Desert.

Terrantai Lodge: www.terrantai.com

E-mail: info@terrantai.com