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Travels in a Thin Country A Journey Through Chile Modern Library Paperback Sara Wheeler Books

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Travels in a Thin Country A Journey Through Chile Modern Library Paperback Sara Wheeler Books

Retraced her trip in the book. While I found the observations accurate, like the obsession with pisco, but there were not many experiences in the book that a typical tourist would encounter. Moments of the book were brilliant and intriguing and there were long stretches that I found myself just wanting to turn the page without reading.


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Travels in a Thin Country A Journey Through Chile Modern Library Paperback Sara Wheeler Books Reviews

This travel book is OK but really doesn't give much insight into the people and their culture.
It was great to read as I travelled the top to bottom route myself. It added much as she travelled to off the beaten track places and met many people the average travel would not.
Can be better researched. A bit disappointed at how random her travel was arranged, and how many travel companions she was sharing this trip with rather than actually exploring the country and discovering it with more introspection.
Just the shape of the country is appealing, in part, due to its uniqueness. It's 2,600 miles long, and, at most, 110 miles wide. A 251 ratio of length to width; no other country comes remotely close. It has the driest desert in the world, where, in parts, it hasn't rained in years. And the very clearest skies, a "mecca" for astronomers, and "New Agers." It is the only country that claims part of Antarctica as an integral part of the country, and has even ensured the birth of a few "anchor babies" to humanize their claim. Like many countries, it has had a "troubled history," which includes other claims to uniqueness. For example, it has had the only freely elected Marxist President, Salvador Allende. And it was "assaulted" by one of the most rigidly orthodox ideologies, one that would rival the Taliban the "free-market" ideology espoused by the "Chicago boys" economists whose equations would injure so many in the immense experiment that was conducted in Chile as part of the "shock doctrine."

Sara Wheeler is a remarkable, erudite, compassionate and gutsy woman. She had finished her first book Evia Travels on an Undiscovered Greek Island (Tauris Parke Paperback) and saw another "main chance." Pinochet, the General that was part of the coup that overthrew Allende in 1973, was finally moved out of office. So, at the age of 30, in 1990, she decided to see and experience Chile, top to bottom, geographically, and in terms of social classes as well. Within the overall plan, and some sub-plans, she took advantage of especially appealing situations when they developed, and she lingered. She travelled by numerous modes of transportation rented "Rocky" jeeps, planes, local buses, trains, boats, by foot, and hitchhiked. She made varying travel alliances, of varying durations. As an example, for three days and two nights she stayed with three policemen, literally at the end of the world, on the island of Puerto Navarino. The police post was nominally guarding Chilean territory from Argentinean encroachment or worse, and lay directly across from its southern most town of Ushuaia. In short - and dare I say phrase it like this - she "travelled like a man." She reports a lot of pleasant interactions with fellow travelers and natives alike, and several less pleasant, interacting with the bores and "know-it-alls" that one might meet, but there is nary a mention of a problem BECAUSE she is traveling alone as young woman, often in remote areas... and that travel issue is of concern to many a woman, as well as their "fellow-travelers", as it were, who are men. Chalk it up, I suppose, to a "stiff British upper lip" in the face of adversity, though I understand she was more forthcoming on this issue in "Evia."

My copy is now well-marked with potential destinations. There is the Elqui valley, whose clear skies were previously mentioned. The Fray Jorge forest is a unique microclimate a tropical forest located in a desert zone which receives three inches of rain annually (sea-mists are the answer). Towns like Frutillar that could have been directly transplanted from Bavaria. Chiloe is a large island in the south that she found fascinating, but the part of Chile that "touched her soul" was the remote, and therefore difficult to reach 11th zone, in the south, that could not be reached by roads.

She prepared for her trip well, by learning the Spanish of South America. And post-trip, she apparently spent many a day in the British museum, researching the history, natural and man-made, of the locales that she visited, which she effectively wove into her actual travel experiences. In terms of societal highs and lows, she stayed on a hacienda in the central valley with "a kind of unreconstructed Tolstoyan feudalism." Before leaving she made a point of visiting and staying in some of the barrios of Santiago which were completely by-passed by the "Chicago boys" "economic miracle," whose benefits seemed to accrue to the "1%." And she enjoyed some nightclubs that were still going strong at 5 am.

She quotes one of leftist persuasion who said that for the socialists of the 1970's, Chile was our Spain (of the 1930's). And she notes the sizable portion of the Chilean population that still supported Pinochet as late as 1988. And she says that the "most depressing nugget of information I ever uncovered about Chile" was the following "Just how little liberation theology had impinged upon many Catholics was revealed in a survey conducted among regular attenders of mass throughout the country in 1971. Two-thirds of them said they wanted the priest to speak only about the life of Jesus and the importance of Christian love and never to mention issues relating to poverty, injustice or the necessity to participate in efforts to change social structures."

Overall, Wheeler has produced an outstanding 6-star read.
To accompany Sara Wheeler on her journey through Chile, from the norhern desert to the icy tip of Antarctica, it's best
to pack a good map as well as a Spanish and English dictonary. It's easy to get lost. Is she still in the Andean foothills or did she double back to Azapa valley? She hitchhikes here and
there, with questionable companions, giving little thought to the readers who must follow along.

Wheeler is quite capable of lyrical writing. When she describes the five-storey tenement inhabited by friends, one can almost smell the garbage spilling from the plastic bags. However, such writing is rare. Too often she substitutes ten dollar words for real insight. It's hard to get excited about the Island of Quinchao described as "green and undulating, with an occasional excrecence of shingle-tiled extravagance."

Wheeler has little knack for what might interest readers. She wastes several pages on a tedious visit with policemen that ends in a silly prank involving a stuffed beaver while devoting barely a line to the tantalizing prospect of obtaining water from sea mist.

Historical and political events are inserted here and there like
the mud puddles she encounters - and are just as clear. Isabelle Allende's novels were the first to whet my appetite for Chile. Unfortunately, Wheeler nearly killed my desire to travel there.

On page 264 Mark, a fisherman, says of the far southern Elventh
Region 'Civilization is a thin veneer down here.' Wheeler's
book is a thin veneer over the country. Chile deserves a
writer with the skill to dig deeper into it's soul.
I read this while traveling in Chile, and found some of the background and history very interesting. I also was interested in the author's story, though it mostly was about "who I traveled with next." After a while it just went on too long, and I didn't finish it.
This a well-written and interesting travelogue. I did enjoy it, but prefer to read travels memoirs by ordinary people who do not have the advantages that Ms Wheeler has all along her journey. She has wealthy and influential contacts which the average traveler just does not have. Staying in a million dollar hacienda must be nice, but how many of us can actually do that? I will stick to the memoirs of the average traveler struggling to find their way in a strange land.
Retraced her trip in the book. While I found the observations accurate, like the obsession with pisco, but there were not many experiences in the book that a typical tourist would encounter. Moments of the book were brilliant and intriguing and there were long stretches that I found myself just wanting to turn the page without reading.