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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.