Chile extends like a ribbon down the west coast of South America for over 4,000 kilometers—but averages only 150 kilometers wide. From the parched but mineral-rich Atacama Desert to haunting Torres del Paine National Park and beyond to stormy Cape Horn, "Chile," wrote Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda, "was invented by a poet." This elongated country, wedged between the deepest ocean and the longest mountain chain, straddles a tectonically unstable region. Mountains cover 80 percent of Chile.