New Travel Title released 18 March 2015

A travel narrative:

Journeys Through the World's Driest Desert

This recounts an extended journey in the Atacama Desert and High Altiplano of South America. The Atacama is the driest non-polar desert one earth, comprising 181,000 square kilometres of ancient lava flows, sand and blinding salt pans spanning northern Chile, northwestern Argentina, Peru almost as north as Lima and southwest Bolivia. It is a place so very hot and so dreadfully dry that if you were to spy a half dozen blades of grass it would be a prairie. The Chilean statesman, Vicuña McKenna, once described the Atacama as the 'Silent land of Death'.

This very readable account will 'transport' the reader though a landscape often compared to that of Mars: rocks the colour of a Dead Sea Scroll, , volcanoes, bubbling mud-springs, fumaroles, geysers, lagoons in electrifying colours and the Desierto de Dali, a landscape so out-of-this world it might have been shipped in specially from elsewhere in the Solar System. There are enigmatic desert petroglyphs, major porphyry copper and gold deposits and the world's oldest mummies, the latter wondrously preserved by the desiccating desert environment.

The great danger for any visitor to this amazing region is sensory overload resulting from the psychedelic landscapes. Disappointment is certainly not an option. So then, slip into the shorts and ‘T’ shirt, apply some sun bloc, and come join me now on my journey through the thirsty pages of this griddle plate landscape.

Available from: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Journeys-Through-Worlds-Driest-Desert-ebook...

Or visit the author's website at: http://www.howardmbeck.co.uk