Chile narrowly stretches along the southern half of the west coast of South America, between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. The bordering countries arePeru to the north, Bolivia to north east and Argentina to the east. Chile has over 5,000 km (3,100 miles) of coast on the South Pacific Ocean.
Chile's unusual, ribbon-like shape — 4,300 kilometres long and on average 175 kilometres wide — has given it a varied climate, ranging from the world's driest desert—the Atacama—in the north, through a Mediterranean climate in the centre, to a rainy temperate climate in the south. The climate and other details of the far south, including the regions of Aysén and Magallanes, remain a mystery to people from central Chile, who are largely convinced that Chile ends at Puerto Montt. The northern desert contains great mineral wealth, including copper, gold, arsenic, and lithium reserves.