You may imagine the world's driest desert to be barren and lifeless - but during the rainy season a magical transformation brings the area to life
Every five to seven years the Atacama desert in Chile becomes adorned by a stunning pink carpet, which makes the usually arid landscape burst with colour
This year's display is said to the most extraordinary blossoming of the past 18 years, and is expected to draw 20,000 tourists to the area.
Flower power: This is the magnificent display currently taking place in the usually barren Atacama desert in Chile
Every five to seven years the arid Atacama desert becomes a coloured flower carpet. Due to the vast amount of rain that came down over the hostile northern land during the last months, this has led to the most spectacular blossoming of the past 18 years
Experts say that heavy rains unleashed by a storm in northern Chile in March are behind this year's particularly magnificent bloom, which has miraculously occurred twice in one year.
'The intensity of blooms this year has no precedent,' Daniel Diaz, the National Tourism Service director in Atacama, told the EFE (http://www.efe.com/efe/english/technology/a-flowering-atacama-desert-the-other-side-of-chile-s-deadly-rainstorms/50000267-2730278) news agency.
'And the fact that it has happened twice in a same year has never been recorded in the country's history. We are surprised.'
The Atacama desert, which spans from Chile to Peru, is made up mostly of salt lakes, sand and felsic lava and receives an average rainfall of just 15mm (0.59 in) per year.
A few areas get as little as 1mm and some weather stations have never had any at all.
It is so arid that even mountains reaching as high as 22,589 ft are completely free of glaciers.
A flowering Atacama Desert, the other side of Chile's deadly rainstorms
The heavy rains unleashed by a storm that battered northern Chile in March have nurtured life in the world's driest desert and thousands
