Hello! My name is Victoria Pla, and I am studying abroad in Santiago, Chile, this semester. During my time here, I have had many opportunities to discover that my Spanish is not as good as I thought it was. Going to a women’s march and not understanding a single word of the chants. Being asked where I am from after speaking about three words. The most apparent example for me has definitely been sitting through a two-hour lecture in Spanish and only having a jumble of phrases in my notes to show for it.
Luckily, I have not had to rely entirely on lectures to understand what I am learning. Before coming to Chile, I decided take classes focused on Chilean history, geography, and culture in the hope of taking advantage of my location. This has turned out to be very rewarding because I have found that my learning escapes the classroom and attaches itself to real people, conversations, and places around the country.
One of the classes I am taking this semester focuses on the Atacama Desert and its strategic importance for Chile, and as part of the GW program, we had the opportunity to visit it ourselves. The desert stretches across northern Chile and is characterized as the driest on Earth, filled with sweeping landscapes of sand dunes and unique rock formations.
We began our trip in Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), where millions of years of tectonic movement, sedimentation, and erosion transformed what was once ocean floor into a landscape that looks like the surface of the moon (as the name suggests!). Around us stood the Andes Mountains, creating the barrier that traps humid air before it can enter the region and makes the desert’s extreme dryness possible.
On our second day, we drove to Valle del Arcoíris (Rainbow Valley) and saw mountains made up of an array of colors. Red from the rusting of iron, green from volcanic rock interacting with oxygen, and white from the dried salts of evaporated water.
That night, we went stargazing. One of the reasons the Atacama is so scientifically important is that its extreme dryness and lack of light pollution make it one of the best places in the world to study astronomy. The sky in the Atacama looked crowded with stars. Our guide pointed his red laser into the sky and showed us the Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies visible only from the Southern Hemisphere. It was the first time I had seen another galaxy with my own eyes!
On our final day, we met with two Atacameños who spoke to us about preserving traditional agricultural practices in the desert. They showed us the corn they still harvest by hand and cook over a handmade fire, explained its different varieties, and described its ceremonial uses associated with birth, death, and health. They told us that most of their neighbors had transitioned to modern cooking methods and that many traditions now survive only in certain recipes, ceremonies, and harvesting methods.
After our trip, I felt like I could better understand the technical processes we were learning about in class because I now had a visual representation of them. Beyond that, the desert became something more than a geography class to me because I had experienced the environment and spoken to the people who live there. If you are studying abroad, I definitely recommend taking classes related to the place where you are living!
Victoria Pla
Spring 2026
GW Chile - Spanish Track (GW Study Program)
Elliott School of International Affairs
International Affairs Major