The Atacama Desert is a desert plateau located on the Pacific coast of South America, in the north of Chile. Stretching over a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land west of the Andes Mountains, it covers an area of 105,000 km2 (41,000 sq mi), which increases to 128,000 km2 (49,000 sq mi) if the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included.

South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern subregion of the Americas.