Everyone knows that Chile is long and skinny, but how many people know that Chile, which is 5% larger than Texas, is longer from north to south than the distance from Washington, D.C, to San Francisco, California?  Chile boasts the driest desert in the world, a reserve in the extreme south that international conservationists rightfully call “the most beautiful national park in the world”, and the alarming archaeological remains of an impressive but now extinct civilization that shone briefly before literally flaming out on a remote island that lies smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, fully a five-hour jet flight west of the Chilean capital of Santiago.