Product Description

The third edition of the Rough Guide to Chile explores all corners of the country from the vast Atacama Desert and magnificent, snow-capped Volcán Osorno to the granite spires of the Torres del Paine massif in Southern Patagonia and the mysterious moai statues on Easter Island. The guide includes reviews for all the best places to stay, eat and drink, to suit every taste and budget - plus a new ''Authors'' Picks'' feature to highlight the very best options. There is plenty of practical information for a range of outdoor pursuits, from trekking and white-water rafting to skiing and snow-boarding. The guide takes a detailed look at Chile''s history and culture and comes complete with maps and plans for every region.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72582 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

Excerpted from The Rough Guide to Chile (Chile (Rough Guides)) by Rough Guides, Melissa Graham. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
WHERE TO GO

Given Chile's great size, and the huge distances that separate the main attractions, it's important to give careful thought to your itinerary before you go. If you want to experience both the northern and southern extremes, you should invest in a LanChile air pass, unless you're prepared to spend many hours sitting on a bus, or are in the country for an extended period. Otherwise, most visitors with just two or three weeks to play with tend to choose between heading north or south from Santiago, even then singling out a few chosen targets, rather than trying to fit everything in. Something else to bear in mind is that, on the whole, Chile's cities are not that exciting, and are best used as a jumping-off point to get out into the backcountry. In light of this, you should seriously consider renting a vehicle for at least part of your trip, as public transport to some of the most beautiful areas, including many national parks, is nonexistent. We discuss each region's highlights in greater detail in the chapter introductions; what follows is a brief summary of the attractions of each area.

Santiago, though boasting some fine monuments, museums and restaurants, is not to everyone's taste, with its ceaseless noise and traffic and heavy pollution, and two or three days here is enough for most visitors. The capital is handy for visiting some of the country's oldest vineyards, while a string of splendid beaches, as well as the romantic port of Valparaíso and fashionable resort of Viña del Mar, also sit on its doorstep.

North of Santiago, highlights include the handsome colonial city of La Serena, the lush, deeply rural Elqui Valley, and another succession of idyllic beaches, the dazzling fringe of the Norte Chico, a region that mostly comprises semi-arid landscapes and brittle vegetation. At the northern edge of this region, the tidy little city of Copiapó serves as a springboard for excursions to the white sands and turquoise waters of Bahía Inglesa, one of the country's most attractive seaside resorts, and east into the cordillera, where you'll find the mineral-streaked volcanoes of Parque Nacional Nevado de Tres Cruces and the dazzling Laguna Verde. Further north, the barren Atacama Desert, stretching over 1000km into southern Peru, presents an unforgettable, if forbidding, landscape, whose attractions number ancient petroglyphs (indigenous rock art), abandoned nitrate ghost towns and a scattering of fertile, fruit-filled oases. Up in the Andes, the vast plateau known as the altiplano, as high and remote as Tibet, encompasses snow-capped volcanoes, bleached-white salt flats, lakes speckled pink with flamingos, grazing llamas, alpacas and vicuñas, tiny whitewashed churches and native Aymara communities. The best points to head for up here are Parque Nacional Lauca, reached from the city of Arica, and Parque Nacional Volcán Isluga, reached from Iquique.

South of Santiago, the chief appeal of the lush Central Valley is its swaths of orchards and vineyards, dotted with stately haciendas, while further south, the famous, much-visited Lake District presents a picture-postcard landscape of perfect, conical volcanoes (including the exquisite Volcán Osorno), iris-blue lakes, rolling pastureland and dense native forests, perfect for hiking. A short ferry ride from Puerto Montt, at the southern edge of the Lake District, the Chiloé archipelago is a quiet, rural backwater, famous for its rickety houses on stilts, old wooden churches and rich local mythology. Back on the mainland, south of Puerto Montt, the Carretera Austral - a 1000km-long unpaved "highway" - carves its way through virgin temperate rainforest and past dramatic fjords, one of which is the embarkation point for a two-hundred-kilometre boat trip out to the sensational Laguna San Rafael glacier. Beyond the Carretera Austral, cut off by the Campo de Hielo Sur (southern ice field) lies Southern Patagonia, a country of bleak windswept plains bordered by the magnificent granite spires of the Torres del Paine massif, Chile's single most famous attraction, and a magnet for hikers and climbers. Just over the easily crossed border in Argentina are two of the region's star attractions: the Fitz Roy Sector in the north of the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, a favourite for trekkers and climbers, and, to the south, the awe-inspiring Glaciar Perito Moreno. Across the Magellan Strait, Tierra del Fuego, shared with Argentina, sits shivering at the bottom of the world, a remote land of a harsh, desolate beauty.

Finally, there are Chile's two Pacific possessions: remote Easter Island, famed for its mysterious statues and fascinating prehistoric culture; and the little-visited Isla Robinson Crusoe, part of the Juan Fernández Archipelago, sporting dramatic volcanic peaks covered with dense vegetation.

WHEN TO GO

The north of the country can be comfortably visited at any time of year, though if you're planning to rent a 4WD and tour the altiplano, note that the unpredictable weather phenomenon known as the Bolivian Winter (or invierno altiplánico) can produce heavy, sporadic rainfall between December and February (the height of summer), washing away roads and disrupting communications.

In the centre and south of the country, you should avoid the months of June to September (unless you plan to go skiing), when heavy snowfall often blocks access to the mountains, including many national parks. The peak summer months are January and February, but as accommodation rates and crowds increase in equal measure, you'd be better off coming in November, December or March, when the weather is often just as good.

Customer Reviews

Best Chile Guide Out Right Now
While traveling for about 4 weeks (April/May '08) throughout Chile I came across many other travels toting around what they joking referred to as "The Bible." This "Bible" was basically any Lonely Planet guide that covered Chile in some way. (It's also referred to in this way because EVERYONE had a copy)

More often than not, though, after they leafed through my guide, The Rough Guide to Chile 3, they wanted to keep it or mentioned that it was simply more informative. (This also happened to me with The Rough Guide to Peru while traveling throughout Peru, obviously)

Also, I looked through the Insight Guide and Fodor's at a bookstore and felt this one superior.

Even with space and weight at a premium, I carried this book around with me always and I'm very glad that I did (I'm one of those ones who doesn't want to feel like he has missed a thing when traveling.) I definitely recommend this book.

A Descent Guide to Chile
The Rough Guide to Chile is a good guide book that offers more than its name suggests. I used it in Santiago, Valparaiso and Vina del Mar to discover what Chile could offer to a traveller. I got a chance to exchange information about other books on Chile, with the help of which some other visitors were, like me, trying to find out their way through the country. As far as the content is considered, the Rough Guide to Chile surpassed all of them. However, Chile is a fast-changing country: some attractions and places are classics, yet others come and go. The book requires minor updates for the latter. In addition, information about specific places--museums for example--is brief.

Nothing rought about this guide!
If you're planning a trip to Chile (or wish you were) this is the book to get you ready. Dealing with everything from money exchange to lodgings to transportation, it has invaluable information to carry you from "tourist" to "traveler." The content is divided by geographical sections (much as the country itself is) to make it easier to plan a trip or get the specific information you need on a trip already planned. If you're interested in getting away from the escorted "back on the bus in five minutes" type of trip, this guide will get you there. There are wonderful descriptions of each region and its attractions, plus names, phone numbers and prices for food, lodging, transportation...even the location of the cambios de change for changing money, ATMs, and tourist informtion centers in each town.
We picked this up by chance in a local library and found it so valuable we're planning to purchase our own copy before our upcoming visit. We'll let you know how well it represented reality when we return!