The Atacama desert in South America is the driest desert in the world, and scientists often compare it to the arid surface of Mars. This place is so dry that weather stations collect an average rainfall is just 1 millimetre (0.04 in) per year in some regions, while mountains in other areas show no signs of even having prehistoric glaciers… ever. NASA uses this desert landscape to test out life-detecting instruments on future Mars missions.

The Atacama covers 105,000 km2 (40,600 square miles) of Northern Chile between the Chilean Coast Range and the Andes Mountains. The desert’s dry atmosphere is a result of mountains on both sides blocking incoming moisture and a coastal inversion layer from the cold Humboldt Current in the Pacific Ocean. You can see how the moisture just stops at the Andes using Google’s satellite mapping. This unique weather pattern results in the near complete and total absence of rain aside from some an occasional marine fog that keeps the algae, lichens and even some cacti hydrated.

Human population is scarce in this desert. Towns that do exist are often built around a natural desert oasis much like the village of San Pedro de Atacama. The town was founded around 1450 and today only holds a population of near 5,000. Visitors to San Pedro often report mild altitude sickness such as dizziness, lethargy and headaches due to the town’s high altitude of 2,400 m (7,874 ft) and dry atmosphere.

The Atacama’s nearly non-existent cloud cover, dry atmosphere, high elevation, and low population (meaning no pollution and radio interference) makes it an ideal location for astronomical studies. There are two major observatories in the desert including the La Silla Observatory, and the Paranal Observatory (which has great Google imagery resolution as well).

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Atacama was used on a large scale for mining sodium nitrate. When synthetic nitrate was invented in the early 1900s, many of these towns subsequently became abandoned – leaving as many as 170 deserted locations that can be seen across the desert today. Some of the most popular locations include Humberstone and Chacabuco. The desert does a great job of preserving these places by preventing natural erosion and decay.

The Atacama’s Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) gives you a chance to experience what it’s like to actually walk on the moon! Like its name suggests, this region west of San Pedro that looks an awful lot like the surface of the moon due to salt deposits that give the ground a white colour and lunar texture. Scientists believe that some of these grounds have not seen a drop of rain in over a hundred years!

The only thing missing from the lunar surface at Valle de la Luna are impact craters, but not to worry because south of this region you can find the Monturaqui meteorite crater. This 460 m (1,509 ft) diameter crater makes the experience of being in another world complete!

To read more about the Atacama, visit Wikipedia.

Locations: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru / Categories: Abandoned, Buildings, Deserts

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Fair traders have established a number of organisations, notably the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO), and national licensing bodies such as the Fairtrade Foundation in the UK, and Transfair in the USA and Canada. Transfair’s Google Earth layer has made it easy to locate fair trade suppliers.²

Above we see icons for a pair of cocoa growing cooperatives – CONACADO in the Dominican Republic and Kuapa Kokoo in Ghana. The members of the latter are (partly) direct owners of Divine Chocolate produced in the UK.³

Craft producers are not currently certified by Transfair, but many commodities are. In India (and several other countries) we can see the icons for rice – the Federation of Small Farmers – and tea – the most excellent Makaibari Tea Estate in Darjeeling, where we do get a good look at the tea terraces.

There are a large number of coffee producers, such as this cluster in Peru, where we can also see the icon for fruit growers.

The WFTO sets global standards for the operation of fair trade businesses, including fair pay, protection of the environment, gender equity and more.

The national licensing bodies certify that goods have been produced within minimum fair trade standards. They also encourage communities to promote fair trade by becoming fair trade towns, villages or cities – meaning that a certain number of qualifying businesses include some fair trade products in their offerings.

The first such community to achieve this goal was Garstang in England, which proudly shows this on the road signs at the entrance to the town.

The majority of fair trade producers in developing countries work in distributed groups, and generally at small farms or workshops, meaning they are hidden in areas where the satellite imagery is very low resolution. However, I have been able to track down one location in Bangladesh – the workshop of Biborton Handmade Paper, in the village of Agailjhara.

Biborton – part of the Prokritee agency – is a group of approximately 70 women working to create paper, which they then transform into greeting cards, gift bags and more. At the right time of day the grassy central courtyard would be a colourful field of paper drying in the sun.

The building at the top of the image is their office and workshop where final products are assembled. The building on the left is where fibres are processed into paper. They also have a number of metal-sided kilns that allow paper to be dried and production to continue even during the monsoon season.

Visit the World Fair Trade Day website to find events in your area.

Locations: Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, England, Ghana, India, Peru / Categories: Other Vehicles, Street Views

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So it’s in Spain where we start with the world’s oldest surviving bullring: Las Virtudes in Santa Cruz de Mudela. It was built way back in 1641, when the bullrings were actually bullsquares – the round shape was adopted later on to prevent the action being confined to the corners.

The style of Spanish bullfighting has changed very little since 1726, when Francisco Romero got off of his horse to fight on foot with the famous red cape and sword.

This tradition was taken with the emigrants to the Americas, where the oldest remaining bullring can be dated back to 1766. By now firmly set on the round shape, Plaza de Acho in Lima, Peru accommodates 13,000 spectators.

Back in Spain, we find the second largest bullring in the world, Las Ventas in Madrid. With a capacity for 25,000 spectators, it has also been used for an AC/DC concert, and hosted a semi-final of 2008′s Davis Cup tennis tournament¹.

To find the largest bullring in the world, we visit what was once the most populated city on the planet: Mexico City. Here we find the gigantic La Plaza Monumental, built in 1946 with a capacity for 41,262 people.

For obvious reasons, bullfighting has drawn a lot of criticism throughout the world, and I’m surprised that these massive venues are still able to draw enough crowds to keep the tradition alive.

However, there are signs that bullfighting will not be around forever: it is no longer televised in Spain, and many opinion polls have shown the majority of the public are just not interested.

In Tijuana, Mexico we can use Google Earth’s historical imagery to see before and after shots of a recently demolished bullring that wasn’t pulling in enough business.

Earlier this year the city of Viana do Castelo in Portugal took the bold step of banning bullfights altogether. Their small ancient bullring will now be used as a “science and education centre”. Presumably bull dissections will not be part of the cirriculum.

This entry is based on an original article from the recently re-launched Google Sightseeing Español, where new author Luis Moreno is posting translated sights from here and original Spanish-langauge content.

Locations: Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Spain / Categories: Stadiums and Sport

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Running for about a mile across the barren rock is this line of holes of varying depths and sizes, with occasional clear gaps, for which locals and archaeologists have no explanation. They have guessed at grain storage and burial sites, though neither theory has held up to scrutiny.

Information and pictures and be found here. What’s your theory?

And don’t miss these Peruvian mysteries previously posted on Google Sightseeing.

Thanks to Remko Jansen and Andrew.

Locations: Peru / Categories: Weirdness

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The concentric rings clearly visible were farming terraces with a sophisticated irrigation system, constructed inside enormous natural depressions in the landscape. Supposedly the Incas built them here to experiment with the different farming conditions the landscape accommodates, as the annual temperature difference between the top and bottom can be up to 15°C (27°F).

Which is fairly impressive given that even this largest depression is only 30 metres (100 feet) deep.

Here’s the very brief Wikipedia page.

Thanks to Josh E.

Locations: Peru / Categories: Structures

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You can follow the switchback road all the way down the mountain to the Urubamba River and north east to the little village of Aguas Calientes. The road is named the Hiram Bingham Highway, after the Yale archaeologist who re-discovered this site in 1911 and promptly pinched hundreds of ancient artefacts (Wikipedia.)

Thanks: Sam Tihen, Tim Finnegan, Ignacio, RoyalPineapple, Fher, Maurício R. Maurer, martin e, Quinn Kuiken, Dan T, Tim, fish, Tom Gula & eRez

Locations: Peru / Categories: Natural Landmarks

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Although they’re called the Nazca lines, the famous geoglyphs also feature hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, and lizards and this giant parrot. But nobody’s really sure why the Nazca people went to all this effort – the images are so large that they couldn’t have seen them without some sort of aircraft, and that’s not very likely as the lines predate manned flight by just a few years.

Apparently for the best view of the lines you need to take a flight over the 53 mile area.

Thanks: too many people to list who submitted this before and after it was high resolution. Thanks all!

Locations: Peru / Categories: Aircraft, Large Type

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There’s absolutly loads of things, a lot of which I either can’t make out in Google Local or can’t understand as I don’t speak Spanish, such as here, here, here, here and here! You might find it easier to view them all on our embedded map or in Google Earth.

Thanks: Tim, Ali, Niklas Bergius, Uwe Rose

Locations: Peru / Categories: Large Type

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Many thanks to Mick D and Greg Day.

Locations: Peru / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Weirdness

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