When I read that a 100th of an inch, or approximately 0.2 millimeters, of rain fell on the Chilean port of Iquique this week, I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t the fact that there was so little of it, not even that it damaged 4000 houses, but that there was any rain at all. A few years ago when I passed through the city, I remember having a conversation with a taxi driver. With a grin, he’d boasted how he’d only seen rain five times in his entire life.

Sandwiched between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, the Atacama Desert is one of the driest regions on earth. Still, I took the taxi driver’s claim with a pinch of salt. And when I arrived in the small desert town of San Pedro de Atacama, the woman at the hostel told me the taxi driver may indeed have exaggerated. The hostel keeper said she had only seen it rain twice.

The Atacama desert isn’t as unbearably hot as the Sahara, which is bonus, because climbing the towering sand dunes is tiring work.

This lack of rain, along with vast sand dunes, makes the area around San Pedro de Atacama perfect for one very gritty sport. Sandboarding was invented in Brazil in the 1940’s. The board is similar to a snowboard, however,  ulike in snowboarding, there are no boots: you just strap your feet to the board, wax the bottom and away you go.

Despite being very dry, the Atacama desert isn’t as unbearably hot as say, the Sahara or the Australian outback. This is a bonus, because climbing the towering sand dunes is tiring work. Nor is it as easy as you might think. The Canadian girl from Whistler who came with us on our adventure was supremely confident. Virtually born on a snowboard, she took to the slope with a thumbs up. Her poise lasted only a couple of seconds before she ploughed head first into the sand. Less surprisingly, my own efforts were spectacularly unsuccessful too.

But the great thing about sandboarding is that even falling over is a lot of fun. The dunes can be tens of metres high, so you just tumble to the bottom in an avalanche of powdery sand. Be warned, though. For days to come, you’ll find grains of sand in the most unexpected of places.