The driest place in the world is the Atacama desert near the Andes in South America. It's marked by an almost "lunar-like" landscape, nearly devoid of plants, animals and insects. The average rainfall there is less than a millimeter a year.
This is an average. Apparently some weather stations in this area have never recorded rainfall. NASA uses the area to test their Mars landing craft. The lack of people and clouds makes it an ideal location for telescopes (that's whats in the photo above and below). In 1973 Pinochet used an abandoned mining town in the area as a prison camp. The empty swimming pool below is from a different abandoned mining town in the same area.....not sure where the water would come from :)
