Not entirely what I was expecting........
Written: Feb 21 '03 (Updated Feb 21 '03)
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Pros: Geological Diversity. Very friendly people. Safest country in South America.
Cons: Conservative country. High prices. Distance from USA.
The Bottom Line: I would recommend Chile but only to those that want adventure travel and don't expect much luxury or pampering.
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| roccco's Full Review: Chile |
After going to South Africa and Zimbabwe in March, 2002, I had to be a travel junkie and squeeze in one more trip before the year ended.
Being that I don't like cold weather, anywhere in the northern hemisphere did not warrant consideration. Also, I don't care for places that are overflowing with tourists or where 10 people I know have already visited.
Since Australia doesn't really interest me all that much and I had just returned from Africa earlier that year, South America was a natural choice. Given the recent economic problems with Argentina and other South American countries, Chile seemed like a good choice.
In retrospect, I should NOT have been scared away from Argentina since, as bad as they have had it lately, it is still 50 times better off than Zimbabwe where I was one week after a very tense election that could have easily led to civil war.
What I learned on this trip is that a strong economy in a foreign country also means that your stagnant US Dollar is not going to get you very far.
By September I had pretty much already decided on Chile and for a few weeks I did intensive research on exactly what I wanted to see in Chile and where I wanted to stay.
Being a runner, I really wanted to use this trip as an opportunity to run a marathon on a foreign continent. This would be my first step towards running a marathon on each of the seven continents. I managed to find a marathon on December 01st. in Vina Del Mar, Chile, a seaside resort city located 90 minutes away from Santiago.
My whole itenerary was focused with my marathon in mind. I needed to start my trip with the marathon for a couple reasons. First, I needed to be in training right up until a couple days before the marathon. Second, it would have been rude for my wife and I to miss Thanksgiving with our families, so we left for Chile the day after on Friday the 29th in order to arrive on the 30th, or just one day before the marathon.
I spoke to many travel agents regarding this trip, both at home in Los Angeles and in Chile on the internet. I ended up selecting a Chilean agent who offered the best prices and worked the most closely with me, never losing patience or trying to charge me a fee for working on my itenerary.
We settled with the following itenerary:
11/29 - Depart LAX. 1 Hour Stopover in Lima, Peru.
11/30 - Early morning arrival in Santiago. Transfer to Vina Del Mar. Two nights at the Gala Hotel, advertised as a 4* Hotel.
12/01 - Vina Del Mar Marathon. Overnight at the Gala Hotel.
12/02 - Transfer to Santiago. Fly from Santiago to Calama in northern Chile. Transfer to San Pedro De Atacama, a small town in the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world set at an elevation of 8,000'. Four nights at the Tulor Hotel, a 3* Hotel that for some reason stood out amongst the other more expensive hotels that I saw on the internet.
12/03 - Atacama Desert.
12/04 - Atacama Desert. My wife's 30th birthday.
12/05 - Atacama Desert. A visit to one of the highlights of the area, The Tatio Geysers, a collection of dozens of large geysers and hot springs at 13,000'+ elevation.
12/06 - Fly from Calama to Santiago. 3 Nights at the 5* Plaza San Francisco Hotel in Downtown Santiago.
12/07 - Santiago
12/08 - Santiago
12/09 - Depart Santiago. Fly to Punta Arenas. 5+ hour transfer by van to Torres Del Paine. Late night arrival for four nights at Hosteria Las Torres.
12/10 - Torres Del Paine National Park
12/11 - Torres Del Paine National Park
12/12 - Torres Del Paine National Park.
12/13 - Depart TDPNP for 5 hour transfer back to Punta Arenas. One night stay at 5* hotel, the Jose Nogueira Hotel in a suite. Wanted to rest up for long trip home.
12/14 - Depart Punta Arenas. 3 hour flight to Santiago. 11 hour flight to LAX.
12/15 - Arrive home.
Well, it was all so perfectly scripted and I was sure that this trip would rival my Southern Africa trip.
The flight from LAX to Santiago on Lan Chile was very nice. Like South African Air, Lan Chile featured individual television screens with DVD players on the back of each airline seat and offered new movies, video games, popular music, etc. After playing Tetris for awhile I was in a complete trance and arrived in Lima, Peru, for our refueling, in what seemed like a shorter period than the 7 hours it actually took.
The Lima stopover was not that nice. We were held in an individual gate that was roped off from the rest of the airport. It must have been 1AM when we were there but it would have been to be able to walk around some rather than being stuck in the gate full of 20 smokers. Anyway, the flight resumed just an hour later. Besides the uppity stewardesses of Lan Chile whom mistaked themselves as fashion models instead of waitresses/maids on an airplane, the flight was nice. Anyway, they did make for nice eye candy.
Arrival in Santiago was very early, possibly 6:30AM. By the time we collected our luggage and found our transfer service, it was no later than 7:15AM. We were then off for our 90 minute transfer to Vina Del Mar. I was surprised at how very green Chile's landscape was and we passed a forested area as well as a wineland region on the way to Vina Del Mar.
VINA DEL MAR - We arrived to the Gala Hotel, a 4* Hotel (or at least it may have been 20 years ago) at just shy of 9AM. Although we were exhausted from our journey, the hotel was full so we were told to literally take a hike and come back in three hours. The hotel was courteous enough to offer us a compimentary breakfast in their restaurant.
Their buffet breakfast consisted of bread, jellies, cereal, yogurt, coffee, imitiation juice (think Tang or Kool-Aid), runny eggs and undercooked bacon. Their restaurant featured British businessmen who believed it their duty to pollute the restaurant with their cigarettes and insisted on sharing the carcinogenics with the rest of us.
After this most satisfying breakfast my wife and I, half asleep, explored the city. This place must have been great twenty years ago but is in dire need of a facelift. We shopped at the mall and bought a few things, including a great pair of very comfortable shoes that I picked up that I continue to wear every day as I write this (3.5 months later).
Upon our return at 1PM, we were shown to our room. Other than the great balcony with an incredible view, it was a very depressing room. 15" television, broken tiles in the restroom, tacky pictures on the wall, etc. Worst of all, it really received a lot of noise from the street 10 floors below.
All I wanted to do was rest for a couple hours before going to the marathon expo at another hotel at 5PM to pick up my race number and to enjoy the carbo-loading dinner and perhaps meet a few of the other runners. We did manage to squeeze in two hour tour of the neighboring city of Valparaiso and went on a tour of the home of Pulitzer Prize winning poet (and Chilean national hero), Pablo Neruda.
After a couple hours rest I felt much better and I had the tour agents end the tour at the marathon sponsoring hotel to pick up my number and meet a few of the other runners, getting my final instructions for the next mornings events. The marathon runners were to be shuttled 26.2 miles away by tour bus to the race start.
Although I was completely out of shape, this was my third marathon of the year and I knew experience would pull me through. It was a beautiful course that was run for the first half inland in green agricultural areas and thesecond half along the Pacific coast.
I struggled some but did finish my marathon. I stuck around for a few minutes to watch some other runners come in and then not wanting any further punishment, took a horse carriage back to my hotel, taking the long route and having my driver give me a 30 minute tour of the city that I enjoyed immensely. Vina Del Mar is a very nice city despite some of its older highrise buildings. It has plenty of trees and beautiful flowers in many places.
I went back to the hotel where my wife was barely getting out of bed at 1PM and after thanking her for making the effort to see me cross the finish line, I invited her out to lunch. We walked around for a little bit, but given the fact that I had just run 26.2 miles, I wasn't in any mood to walk any further than the closest restaurant around...McDonald's!!! From there it was off to the awards ceremonies at the marathon finish line. We were back to the hotel by 7PM and in for the night.
Next morning was the 90 minute drive back to Santiago and our two hour flight to Calama, followed by a one hour drive to San Pedro De Atacama. I was worried about this portion of the trip, thinking that it was going to be no more than a dusty Mexican-like town, but it was nothing like that.
While it was dusty, it was a beautiful place with towering mountains (including volcanos) nearby. We stayed at the Tulor Hotel a 3* hotel that was only 3* for its simple and comfortable rooms. Everything else about the hotel, including its lobby/reception area, restaurant and pool was 4*. The owners of the hotel served as the hosts and were very hospitable as were their dogs, Rita and Sara, two big hound dogs, a mother and daughter team!
While in Atacama we had constant activity, including a trip to the Tatio Geysers, the Valley Of The Moon, the Great Dune...a monstrous sand dune that took most people 30 minutes or more to climb but took my wife and I closer to an hour, and to many other great places. On all but one day we did some daylong excursion or another.
The good thing about Atacama was that the town had nice restaurants, often with live music, and had internet cafes.
The town was mostly full of college age students but being that we are just a few years removed from college, we were able to enjoy it almost as much as they seemingly were.
Dinners at the Tulor Hotel were great. "Tulor" is the name of the dwellings of the ancient indigenous people that lived in the region and they are round in shape with a thatched roof. The hotel restaurant was designed as an actual replica of a Tulor and completely reminded me of the restaurants at $1000 per night private game reserves in Africa.
The restaurant had some GREAT music that completely fit the setting. I enjoyed a bottle of fine Chilean wine with my wife over each dinner as well. The dinners were a true highlight of my stay at the Tulor and other than the wine it was very reasonable at only about $7 per person including salad, entree and desert.
My time in San Pedro De Atacama was definitely the highlight of this trip.
From Atacama it was back to Santiago for three nights. Santiago was a nice city with some very nice areas. I did not experience any of the smog that I had been warned of previously. We mostly spent our time in Santiago shopping, looking at real estate and just hanging out.
We stayed at the 5* Plaza San Francisco Hotel. It was a very nice hotel with a really nice, classy looking restaurant and elegant lobby/lounge/bar where plenty of people enjoyed an "open bar" each night (all you can drink for $11 USD that still managed to keep out the rowdy crowd).
We were in a suite but I was a little disappointed that it was on the second floor and not a higher floor. We did get some noise from the street and were right next to their ballroom that featured a wedding reception on our first night. The room did have a jacuzzi tub, one reason why I selected it in the first place.
Santiago was mostly anticlimatic and was only a rest camp between my stops in Vina Del Mar, Atacama and my final destination, Torres Del Paine (Patagonia).
Patagonia was to be THE highlight of the trip. Featuring places such as Lago Grey and Los Hornos (the jagged horned mountains that shoot straight up into the sky in Torres Del Paine), I was sure that this place was going to be fantastic.
It was a three hour flight to Punta Arenas, the nearest major airport to Torres Del Paine, and then a demoralizing 5+ hour van ride to Torres Del Paine. We finally arrived to Torres Del Paine at about midnight.
We were very disappointed with our room at Hosteria Las Torres. We were paying $200 per night and not even getting 1 square foot per dollar spent as we were in a room not measuring more than 175 sq. feet, including bathroom. The walls were paper thin and we awoke to construction going on outside by 8AM.
The food at Hosteria Las Torres was okay but nothing like their website had promised. Lunches and dinners were a complete ripoff at $25 and $30 each per person and didn't even include any soft drinks or bottled water. In addition to those costs, I had prepaid more than $100 per day for tours that were supposed to be with an English speaking guide. Only one day did they provide an English speaking guide and on the other days my wife had to translate from Spanish to English for me, something she was not very happy about (she was, after all, on vacation).
While Torres Del Paine National Park was beautiful, after the gouging I was taking from the hotel, it made it a little harder to appreciate. The weather was pretty tame except for a couple gusts of wind that may have been 70mph.
We were scheduled to stay for four nights but got so disgusted with the price gouging that we actually packed up a day early and demanded that the hotel take us two hours back into Puerto Natales, the only big town between Torres Del Paine and Punta Arenas. We forfeited our $200 per night room in order to save possibly $130 or more in food.
We were lucky to catch a bus back to Punta Arenas immediately and only had to pay $5 each for a 175 mile trip on a very comfortable tour bus.
The Jose Nogueira Hotel in Punta Arenas was gracious enough to accept us a day early with no extra charge. On our final day we made arrangements with Lan Chile to allow us to fly home a day early, but at an additional cost of $100 per person. Our suite at the Jose Nogueira was incredibly luxurious and measured possibly 700 sq. feet with a separate entry room and huge bathroom with full size jacuzzi.
In the end, on a scale of 1-10, I would give Vina Del Mar a 6.5, San Pedro De Atacama an 8.0, Santiago a 6.5, Torres Del Paine a 6.0 and Punta Arenas a 6.0. The real killer of this trip was the Hosteria Las Torres. There were people camping on their site within 1000' from us who paid $18 USD per night while we were paying $200 per night for a room not much bigger than their tents!
Many tourists I spoke to said that they very much preferred Argentina to Chile, that the exchange rates were great in Argentina and that Argentina was perfectly safe.
Ultimately, Chile is a good place for backpackers and students but is not equipped to handle luxury travel. The real tragedy is that for the price of this vacation ($8,000 USD), I could have had an incredible time had I returned to South Africa. I wanted to slap some of the other tourists on my tours when they were oohing and aahing over seeing a llama or a fox when just months earlier I had been twice as close to lions, leopards, rhinos, hippos and elephants in Africa.
While I knew this trip would be an active trip, I was still expecting a slightly higher degree of luxury and service that did not exist.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Friends
Best Time to Travel Here: Dec - Feb
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Epinions.com ID:
roccco
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Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 0 members
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