Stargazing in the ATACAMA

In the remote Chilean desert, Tom Vanderbilt sees light through the darkness

- Tom Vanderbilt

THERE IS BATHING, there is sunbathing, and there is shinrin-yoku, the recently trendy Japanese concept of "forest bathing." On a typically cloudless night in Chile's Atacama Desert, as my family and I reclined on metal chaise longues, looking up at the wildly expansive southern sky, I experienced something totally new: star bathing.

When Pía Urbano Mena, the astronomy guide at the Nayara Alto Atacama, turned off the ambient lights at the hotel's small observatory, there was a magic, neck-tingling moment as the inky blackness absolutely enveloped us. "It's going to take around 15 minutes for our eyes to adjust to darkness," Urbano Mena said. "At first, you'll hardly see anything. But then you'll see everything."