Lomas

Lomas (Spanish for "hills"), also called fog oases and mist oases, are areas of fog-watered vegetation in the coastal desert of Peru and northern Chile. About 100 lomas near the Pacific Ocean are identified between 5°S and 30°S latitude, a north–south distance of about 2,800 kilometres (1,700 mi). Lomas range in size from a small vegetated area to more than 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) and their flora includes many endemic species. Apart from river valleys and the lomas the coastal desert is almost without vegetation. Scholars have described individual lomas as "an island of vegetation in a virtual ocean of desert."^[1]

In a nearly rainless desert, the lomas owe their existence to the moist dense fog and mist which rolls in from the Pacific. The fog is called garúa in Peru and Camanchaca in Chile.