Chile: Travels in a Thin Country [Paperback]

 

 

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This is "travel writing" in the sense that we know it these days. Author thinks of a trip. If successfully published previously, gets an advance. Makes arrangements, connections and contacts, sharpens pencils, buys dictaphone tapes and tickets and goes. The result is what was intended from the start - a book. OK, no harm in that. This is what Sara Wheeler does for a living, just like Bryson, Theroux, Palin et al. Other authors go nowhere, make it all up - that's fiction. Somewhere in between is Bruce Chatwin, who went to places and then made a lot of it up. So, for those of us who have bought these books and in fact pay for these trips, was this one worth it?

I'd say it was. Sara Wheeler writes well. She's humorous but not jokey. She's thoughtful but not pedantic. She gives us social and historical background without becoming boring, didactic or turgid. It's very entertaining, interesting and a pleasure to read.

It's not a Guide Book. Buy one with "Guide" in the title for that. It's not even a book to guide you to Chile. It's only just a book about Chile at all. Like many books of this type, it is about the author and her reactions and reflections on being who she is wherever it is she happens to be. Of course, along the way we are told a good deal about Chile. I particularly liked the even-handed way she dealt with the Allende-Pinochet period. This is still central to Chilean life, so it was important to get it right and I believe she did. I also like her "coming out" in her admission that she does not like the poems of Chile's cultural patron saint, Pablo Neruda. She even decides she doesn't like him as a man. But she does nevertheless understand and acknowledge his importance and status in Chilean life.

I'd like to have been able to subtract another half-star. The half-star would have been deducted for the account of her final period on the Chilean mainland, down in the south. The descriptions of the landscape there become a bit over-heated. The adjectives fly thick and fast. One is up to one's ears in them in no time. This is why they say a picture is worth a thousand words because sometimes a thousand words are nine hundred and fifty too many.

The whole star I have deducted on account of her rather snooty attitude to other travellers. She even has a passage where she refers to people [back-packers, I think] "doing South America". Well, if she's not "doing Chile" I don't know what "doing" a place means. Like anyone not a resident, or employed to be in a place, she's a visitor - tourist, if you like - just like anyone else.

There's a good case for saying that those who travel in a place without any of the prior contacts that Sara Wheeler made, have a more authentic experience of that place. In my experience, one's arrival at a place can define the whole trip - it certainly sets the tone for a good deal of it. Sara Wheeler was met at the airport by a British Council couple and whisked off to a 13th floor penthouse "set amongst manicured lawns and acacia trees". When you or I get there, we'll take a cab, or maybe a bus, hoping not to be too ripped off or lost, heading for a hotel we may regret - or can't afford.

She was fortunate in the connections she established before she left UK. Persuading Linguaphone [who get a credit and recommendation, complete with contact details, in her Acknowledgements] was a fine prelude. Having a friend who can set you up to stay with staff of The British Council in the capital of the country you are going to visit is a gold-plated start: likewise having an introduction to one of the country's haute bourgeoisie, with whose family you subsequently experience la vie en rose unavailable to 99% of the local population, let alone the average visitor "doing" Chile.

Still an' all, her good fortune in this is grist to the mill and what she has written is certainly a good read, if a little lacking in humility in places. Others have said it has inspired them to visit Chile. For me, that inspiration comes from Chilean wines and Isabel Allende's "My Invented Country".

I could probably have lived a full and happy life without ever visiting Chile, but after reading this book I'm determined to go. Sara Wheeler's account of a North-South journey through the "thin country" is entertaining, well written, funny and insightful. Towards the end of her trip she wangles her way to Antarctica with the Chillean navy and this led to another excellent travel book. Highly recommended

Bill Bryson has always been my fantasy ideal travel companion. That is, until I discovered Sara Wheeler.
(sorry, Bill).
Having just read another book on Chile, "Between Extremes", this one shines in comparison to that rather turgid volume. The same route from north to south is taken - though as Chile is indeed such a "thin country" there really isn't much alternative.
Sara Wheeler is everything a travel writer should be: well-informed, funny, and self-deprecating. I laughed long and often; once, on a train, I had to stop reading it as I was getting such strange looks.
(quote: "our room was made entirely of hardboard, the bathroom locked on the outside and we had to unscrew the lightbulb to turn the light off")
She is prepared to suffer in her research: sea sickness, scabies, and hangovers. She is an adventurer, hitch hiking with truckers, horse riding, and forming ever-changing liaisons with the people she encounters. From night to night she swops tents with estancias, ferries, boarding houses and aristocratic residences. ("the other passengers were all men, and when they weren't sleeping, they entertained themselves by staring at me").
The geography, politics and people of Chile are laid before us; not exactly neatly, because Chile is anything but neat - but satisfyingly and comprehensively.
And anyone who travels with Gavin Young's "Slow Boats To China" must be ok.
I'm riding in the Torres del Paine in February - want to come, Sara?

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4.0 out of 5 stars A great insight into Chile
I'm going to Chile for a month in January and wanted to get a perspective beyond the usual travel guides. Sara Wheeler's book does just that. Read more

Published 16 months ago by patpatpat

5.0 out of 5 stars This is not a travel guide - but it's not meant to be!!!!
Travels in a thin country is a beautifully written and vividly described journey through much of the length of this fascinating counrty. Read more

Published on 12 Aug 2006 by schubb

4.0 out of 5 stars Good(ish) tour of Chile, but lacking
Sara Wheelers travels in a thin country is a reasonable travel book through Chile, but it is certainly not an authoritive guide. Read more

Published on 8 July 2002

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