Chile: Physical Geography

Chile occupies a long, narrow strip of land along the western edge of South America, squeezed between the Pacific Ocean and the towering Andes Mountains. The country extends more than 4,000 kilometers from north to south yet averages well under 200 kilometers in width, giving it one of the most distinctive shapes of any nation and a correspondingly wide range of landscapes and climates.

In the far north lies the Atacama Desert, among the driest regions in the world, where some areas receive virtually no measurable rainfall. South of the desert, central Chile is dominated by a fertile Central Valley running between the coastal mountain range and the Andes, home to the capital, Santiago, and most of the country's population under a Mediterranean climate. Farther south, the landscape becomes progressively wetter and cooler, giving way to lake-studded forests, glaciers, and, toward Cape Horn, an intricate maze of fjords, channels, and islands.

The Andes, which form Chile's eastern boundary with Argentina and Bolivia, include hundreds of volcanoes, some still active, and reach their highest point at Ojos del Salado, one of the tallest peaks in the Western Hemisphere. Roughly four-fifths of Chile's terrain is mountainous, and the country's position along the Pacific Ring of Fire makes it one of the most seismically active places on Earth, a vulnerability underscored by the magnitude 9.5 earthquake that struck near Valdivia in 1960, the strongest ever recorded.