Arriving

One of the typical routes from the US to Santiago Chile via American Airlines is Miami to Santiago. This usually leaves Miami at night and arrives 7 hours later in Santiago in the morning. Although Sita and I were on different flights it appears we had the same experience of arriving. When the first daylight breaks and you wake up on the airplane all you see is clouds below, then about 15 minutes before starting to land you can see mountains popping up through the clouds. The Atacama desert in Northern Chile is the driest desert on the planet, after witnessing the following view I could see why. All the clouds coalesce at the edge of the mountains and stay put. Presumably they can’t overcome the Andes and thus never travel over the desert and provide rain.




After seeing many dry mountain tops you begin to see the farmlands that surround Santiago.