interestingasfuck

Always wondered about Chile. Not even 20M people on all that land and coastline. Hopped on Google maps and now I get it, or get more than I did.

The southern third is wildly inhospitable for settlements. Any city or town would be cut off from everywhere. Never seen land so fractured. Waterways, lakes and ocean inlets dice it into small (and tall!) puzzle pieces, looks like the continental equivalent of an accordioned car. Building roads and bridges would be a nightmare for both expense and logistics. Not to mention, the very southern tip is next door to Antarctica. Take a look and zoom around, wild country. Wonder how it would be living off the land? Plenty of water, vegetation, and presumably, wildlife.

The top third might as well be on the moon, 600+ miles of complete wasteland. Now I get why they practice Mars missions in the Atacama desert, driest place on Earth. Some spots have never received rainfall in recorded history. You could straight up perform heart surgery in the open with zero fear of microbes or fungi.

The middle chunk, from about Santiago down, looks fairly normal. Plenty of cities and roads and fields, land isn't too cracked up, seems flat enough, especially compared to the rest of the geography.

EDIT: Did some more looking. The south looks like an ambitious D&D map. No need to look further, it's all like that.

LOL, found a golf club smack in the desert. (-21.90611744187072, -70.17456583673224) Found a food truck in the desert with nothing else nearby. Lost that one, can't find it again.