From the World’s Driest Desert to Your Palate: The Story Behind Lickan D’Or’s Atacama Bonbons

Imagine a place so inhospitable that most life simply refuses to exist there — a landscape of salt flats, volcanic rock, and skies so clear that astronomers build their most powerful telescopes here. Now imagine that, for over 12,000 years, an entire civilization has not just survived in this place, but mastered it, coaxed extraordinary flavors from its soil, and passed that knowledge down through generations. That civilization is the Lickan Antay — the indigenous people of Chile’s Atacama Desert. And now, for the first time, their ancestral harvest is reaching the world in the form of something remarkable: an artisan chocolate bonbon.

Lickan D’Or’s 9-piece box of bonbons — is not simply a chocolate product. It is an edible archive of a desert civilization, pressed into 65% cacao and filled with flavors that have never before been exported in this form.

The People Behind the Flavor: Who Are the Lickan Antay?

The name Lickan Antay comes from their ancestral language, Kunza, and translates roughly as “the inhabitants of the territory.” Also known as Atacameños, they are one of the oldest surviving civilizations in South America, with a cultural presence in the Atacama region dating back over 12,000 years. Their ancestral lands stretch across the salt flats and altiplano that today straddle northern Chile, northwestern Argentina, and southwestern Bolivia.

The Lickan Antay developed mastery where others saw only impossibility. In one of the driest non-polar environments on earth — a desert that is 50 times drier than California’s Death Valley — they built sophisticated irrigation systems, cultivated crops, raised llamas, and developed a profound spiritual and agricultural bond with the land. Water, in their communities, is treated with near-sacred precision: distributed among families by the hour, used to the minute, not a drop wasted. From that careful stewardship grew an extraordinary indigenous agriculture.

Today, much of the Lickan Antay community is concentrated in San Pedro de Atacama and surrounding villages like Toconao, Socaire, and Talabre. They maintain a deep connection with the land, water, and stars — a worldview reflected in their rituals, their relationship with nature, and their community organization. Their cosmology sees the volcanoes as sacred protectors, and they recognize the Pata Hoiri — Mother Earth — as the true giver of everything they have.

 

Lickan D’Or: Gold of the People

The brand name itself carries the weight of that heritage. In the Kunza language, Lickan means “People” or “Town.” Combined with the French word for gold — D’Or — the brand’s full meaning is “Gold of the People.” The name is both a tribute to the Lickanantai people and a declaration of intent: to reveal the hidden richness of the Atacama, a desert that most see as barren, but that its people have always known as abundant.

Master chocolatier Karin Ossandón — a Lickan Antay woman and pharmaceutical chemist who returned to her family’s ancestral lands in San Pedro de Atacama — produces the bonbons in small batches in the Ayllu of Checar, a traditional desert settlement a few kilometers from the town center. An ayllu is a Lickan Antay community unit tied to shared land, resources, and ancestry — and it is from this intimate, land-rooted setting that every bonbon in the Lickan Ckachi collection is born.

Her work carries a dual mission: to protect the ancestral agriculture of the Lickanantai people and to share its extraordinary flavors with the world, blending world-class cacao with wild-harvested herbs and fruits that have sustained her community for millennia.

 Flavors Found Nowhere Else on Earth

What makes the Lickan Ckachi collection truly singular is its ingredients. Each bonbon’s filling is built from Atacama botanicals that are not simply exotic — they are ecologically exclusive, growing in conditions that exist nowhere else on the planet.

Rica Rica

An aromatic herb endemic to the Atacama altiplano, Rica Rica delivers earthy, herbaceous, and subtly minty notes unique to the region’s high-altitude foothills. Used for centuries in Lickan Antay cooking and rituals, it brings a complex, wild intensity to the bonbon — a flavor unmistakably of this desert and nowhere else.

Chañar (Geoffroea decorticans)

A small, thorny tree growing exclusively in the arid zones of northern Chile and Argentina, the chañar is one of the most important plants in the Lickan Antay diet and medicine. Its sweet, honey-like fruit has been ground into flour, made into syrup, and fermented into chicha for thousands of years. In the bonbons, it contributes a warm, caramel-adjacent sweetness.

Limón (Lemon Zest)

Bright, zesty, and unmistakably fresh — the lemon bonbon is filled with a vibrant lemon zest ganache that cuts through the richness of the 65% dark chocolate with precision. Lemons have been cultivated for generations in the desert oasis plots of the Atacama, and in this bonbon their aromatic oils are captured at full intensity, delivering a citrus burst that lingers long after the chocolate melts.

All three flavors rest in a base of premium 65% dark chocolate — rich and intense without excessive bitterness — providing the perfect canvas for these rare desert flavors to shine.

How to Taste the Desert: A Suggested Journey

The collection has its own recommended tasting order, designed to mirror a journey through the Atacama’s flavor landscape:\

• Begin with the Limón bonbon — bright, zesty, a citrus burst that wakes the palate.
• Move to the Chañar bonbon — honey-sweet, warm, deeply earthy.
• Finish with the Rica Rica bonbon — wild, herbaceous, the full intensity of the Atacama altiplano.

For pairing, the brand recommends a bold Chilean Carménère or a smoky Highland Scotch. Store the bonbons at 60–65°F (15–18°C), away from humidity and direct sunlight, to preserve the artisanal temper of the chocolate.

More Than Chocolate: Why This Collection Matters

The Lickan Antay are not people of the past. With a population of over 30,000 in Chile alone, they are an active, living community navigating the pressures of modernity — lithium mining corporations, mass tourism, and cultural erosion — while fighting to preserve their ancestral lands, language, and knowledge.

Lickan D’Or was born with a mission: to protect that ancestral agriculture by creating an economic and cultural bridge between Atacama and the world. Every box purchased directly supports production from Lickan Antay lands, creating incentive to keep these rare plants cultivated, these traditions alive, and this knowledge in the hands of those who have safeguarded it for millennia.

In a market where “artisanal” and “craft” are used loosely, the Lickan Ckachi collection is the real thing: produced by a single master chocolatier, in a traditional desert settlement, using ingredients that grow nowhere else on Earth, shaped by a culinary tradition 12,000 years in the making.

“Every bonbon is a tribute to the resilient spirit of the desert — a hidden richness that we now share from the heart of the Chilean Altiplano to the world.”

— Lickan D’Or

Get the Lickan D’Or Collection

The Handcrafted Atacama Desert Bonbons — Artisanal 9-Piece Collection is available now through Pure Andes at $42.00 for a 9-piece box. Each piece ships from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile — directly from the hands of the maker, to yours.

Whether you’re a chocolate connoisseur, a curious traveler, or someone who believes that what we eat can carry history — this collection is something genuinely new. A flavor profile found nowhere else on Earth, made by a people who have always known that the desert is not empty. It is full.