A closer look
Nestled in the brutally arid Atacama Desert, Humberstone and Santa Laura were bustling hubs for mining saltpeter—basically bird poop used for explosives and fertilizer—until synthetic alternatives bankrupted them. The desert climate was so bone-dry that the abandoned theaters, swimming pools, and rusty machinery didn't decay, freezing the towns in 1960. Today, you can wander these post-apocalyptic settlements, enjoying a lovely vacation spent in the ruins of the global fertilizer trade.
