Customer Reviews

Chile Guide (Open Road Travel Guides)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I really enjoyed the Open Road Chile Guide. The recomendations for restaurants and hotels were excellent, just right on. So many guidebooks swamp you with endless lists of names and numbers, without any real input. This guide not only differentiated among the travel options, giving valuable insight, it did so in an readable, quite entertaining manner.

Having just returned from Chile with this book as my primary reference guide, I found myself continually borrowing other guidebooks. Simply put, it contains too little information. I also found some of the authors' opinons a bit stronger than what I care to have when travelling an unfamiliar country. The two standards, Footprints and Lonely Planet, remain for me the best guides to South American travel. I regretted carrying this one along enough to have donated it to a hostal in Punta Arenas.

Admittedly, the guide takes a fun approach, and has interesting and readable content. However, because it lacks the depth of more veteran sources, I recommend this guide only as a supplemental reference.

Upon becoming stranded in southern Chile, we had the luck of meeting & being rescued by the authors of this book. Their expertise about all things Chilean gave us a new perspective about foreign travel (plus they directed us to a wonderful hotel, & they even knew the owner - Carlos) The Youman / Estep team are world travelers that truely know how to experience the wonder of exploring unfamiliar ground. We were lucky to be given an early copy of the book and it became an essential guide for the rest of our trip. This book delivers a view of Chile unlike any other travel guide. A extra thanks to Mr Estep for the special care given to our traveling companion Sophie, She will always remember him.

This is a must read for any Chile traveler. I couldn't put it down! This was obviously written by two very experienced, knowlegeable adventure seekers. They know Chile! Do they have any other travel guides? I'd like the collection.

No guidebook that seeks to be comprehensive ever seems to achieve complete accuracy and neutrality. I'm a resident of Chile, and when I head out to the territories I find that most guidebooks suffer from either obsolete data or offensive social notions toward the target countries. However, this title comes closer than the others as an acceptably good guide. My principal objection is that it is a bit too large in format and heavy to handily backpack with (vs the South American Handbook, for example). On the other hand, it strikes a good balance between large size (good reading, much detail) and the abbreviated guides (basic details, sparse background information). CHILE GUIDE would be an excellent choice if shaving off the ounces in your pack is not a problem.

For an August trip to Chile (skiing season), I bought this and a half dozen other travelogues, guide books, etc. Hands-down, this proved to be the most practical and useful, especially for our group (we went on a whim, no real advance planning, and felt our way through). They had particularly good advice about accomodations, especially some off the beaten path, in all ranges -- from hostels to deluxe ranches. I'm going back in a few months and this will definitely be in my knapsack (along with my edition of "501 Spanish Verbs") the entire way.

I just got back from two weeks in Chile. I had several guidebooks and found this one to be the best by far. I only had two weeks so I really needed help in narrowing down my options. This book does a great job of that. They offer opinions, which I like.

I appreciate the fact that the book is geared towards "the midrange traveler." I have moved up from flea-bag cheap hotels and tasteless, cheap food, but don't like personality-less expensive hotels and restaurants. I am right in the middle and this book offers the best reviews of this category.

They really did a good job of offering suggestions for what to do with limited time. I needed that kind of info and they delivered perfectly.

Highly recommended!

Although many of the other reviewers were critical of the information in this book, I found it the only Chile guidebook that had recommendations for places that only Chileans know about. I also found the tone of the book entertaining, and it was clear that the authors actually lived here instead of visited a few times. Before moving here, my Chilean husband and I used it for a two week trip for 10 "gringos" and found not one recommendation to be off target. In fact, we've recommended some of the places to other Chileans! Its target audience is not the Lonely Planet crowd, but those of us who are no longer staying in hostals and have the means to rent a car instead of taking the bus.
We live in Chile and after one of our visitors "borrowed" the book, we are now ordering a new copy to be able to plan future getaways and itineraries for friends. I couldn't recommend it more!

I purchased this guide in '99 and used it for trips to Torre del Paine ('99) and the Atacama ('00) while we were based in Buenos Aires. I found that the descriptions were generally right on point although prices had gone up. The proposed itineraries are all do-able in the time recommended and the suggestions for hotels were great. I'm now using it to plan our December trip covering Santiago to Puerto Montt. It's a wonderful addition to my standard bible, The South American Handbook.

Finally a book that gives the traveler a non-touristy guide to Chile...will carry with me religously when I visit the country.