Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Chile & Easter Island (Lonely Planet Chile and Easter Island)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When planning my trip to Chile, I bought about every Chile guide I could find, and I have about 8 or 10 of them. While none of them had "everything" this one was definately the best of them. The city maps were useful as they are in all Lonely Planet books anad its practical information helped decide where to go and how to get around. I think it gave me the most useful information of all the other guidebooks. I planned my entire trip to Chile and Easter Island from guidebooks and phone calls without any tour agency. I think I did find a couple things out of date as others did, but that is, as said another reviewer, common to all guidebooks as they are researched over a period of time, then edited & compiled, then finally released. I recommend getting this book if you plan to visit Chile and also another book for another point of view and other details. The book is not perfect, but it is probably the best out there on the subject.

While shopping for a guidebook for my first visit to Chile, this book (the previous edition of it) looked like the most comprehensive guidebook available. It was extremely helpful for both choosing what places to visit and how to visit them. As some other reviewers noted, there were some weaknesses and omissions and some information was out of date, but the current edition of the book is likely to be more up-to-date. Anyway, if you need your whole trip laid out for you, you are probably better off joining a tour group. I found the Lonely Planet Trekking in the Patagonian Andes was a good complement to this book. I certainly wish all the information had been available in a single book, but given the amount of detail in both the Chile and Patagonian Andes books, I don't begrudge Lonely Planet too much.

I was really stunned by the number of things that were not in this book. But for a number of things, like finding good places to eat and sleep, this was far and away, the best book that I used in Chile (I also had Openroad and Footprints).

Example things that were left out: almost anything on Torres del Paine. No mention of the W. No mention of a glorious day hike in Puerto Natales. Little mention of logistics for getting around to various parks.

It seems to me that this is an essential book to have, but I don't think that it will do as the only one. And I don't have a good recommendation for the other one

I just got back from Chile this week and use this book. It had some good info but I would not use this as your only guide book. I found three problems with this book.

1. Not many opinions. I don't want to be told that a place is "worth a try" I want to be told why it is worth a try...i.e. good selection, great steak, clean rooms etc.

2. It is out of date. It was published in May 97 and things have changed like prices, additions to national parks and attractions. I went to two hotels that were no longer in business.

3. Covered a lot of things and did not really go into depth on the major attractions like Torres del Paine National Park. It did not talk about all the trails, or hotels available or plus and minuses of them.

The book is okay but there must be better ones out there that are more up to date. At the beginning he had a suggested itinerary but it was too general. I would like to have been told straight up from the beginning that Torres del Paine is the most popular and spectacular attraction and to center my trip around it.

Some Lonely Planet guides become a traveler's "bible". Unfortunately not this one. I lived a whole year in Chile and during this time traveled extensively from north to south. The book is alright if you are just looking for a short overview and some basic info. However, the book falls sadly short of providing really detailed info on accomodation (especially budget and mid-range) or restaurants and in general too often only scratches the surface, leaves out less known but equally interesting places. In a nutshell - the LP is good for some practical info but shouldn't be the traveler's only source of information. I would recommend to buy either the "Chile Experience Travel Guide" (English) or the annually updated, excellent "Turistel" guides (Spanish), both by Turiscom. You can get them in any bookstore in Santiago or other Chilean cities. Chile is a wonderful country to explore and definitely deserves a better guide book.

This is for certain one of the best Lonely Planet guides I came across (and I do have a very large collection). Perhaps aided by the fact that Chile is a relatively small country, yet stretching from the tropical to the antarctic areas, and by the relative homogeneity of the country in terms of society and culture, the author and editors have done an excellent job in collecting and putting together all the best information a traveller to Chile would need. I know Chile very well, and can witness that this information is up-to-date, correct, unbiased, and altogether an indispensable tool for any traveller, providing all necessary data for the more well-off and for 'backpackers' alike. The information is concise and clear. Everything is excellently written, thus ensuring real pleasure too. The sections on politics, history and society are excellent too. Altogether, it is a great companion while travelling in Chile or dreaming of Chile.

While staying in Argentina, my husband and I decided we'd like to travel to Chile for a short period of time, and thought we were lucky to find a copy of this book in a bookstore in Buenos Aires. In retrospect, I think we should have spent the money on a fancy restaurant (Yes, B.A. is that cheap.).

Even in helping us decide which city to travel to, this book contained little information, lacking the great in depth and funny stories that characterized the other LP books we've used. (Perhaps other cities in Chile had better info, but we were comparing Santiago, the capital, Valparaíso, and Viña del Mar.)

We ended up going to Viña del Mar, and in spite of the city being a huge tourist destination, there was little information about lodging; ditto for restaurants or entertainment. Those 3 things being our main use of the LP books (which we could not have lived without in Argentina and Brazil), I wish we had not wasted our money.

This is an excellent guide for travelling Chile, specially if you do not know anything about that country, but sometimes many places are missing. I think that with this guide you can plan your trip without needing any help from another guide.

No one could deny that this book is packed with info, but its failure to give an opinion one way or the other makes it a frustrating experience, especially in the way of restaurants. I don't particularly care if a place serves Italian food if I don't know if it's good or bad. Guide books should do just that, guide you. I hope there's something better out there...

I'm not quite sure the other reviewers looked at the same guide book. This one has plenty of opinions (like telling you what restaurants are expensive, what guesthouses are gloomy, etc.) and, of course, it's "outdated"----any guidebook is out of date the moment it's published and the LP folks tell you that upfront. I would have appreciated more on the Torres del Paine, but I could say the same of Footprints or other common guides to Chile. If you expect everything in a guidebook to be fully current and the opinions to be exactly what you need, you should stay home and leave the traveling to people who actually want to experience the world.