Rain? In the Atacama? Again?

Early one morning a decade or so ago, I stepped outside my hotel in the northern Chilean port of Antofagasta (pictured above) to notice an unexpected scent – during the night, it had rained in the world’s driest desert. It was barely a sprinkle, with traces of moisture on the pavement, but it reinforced for me the rarity of rain in the Atacama Desert (note the utterly barren hills behind