Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to Chile 2 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

having spent a couple of months travelling through chile, i got to know my rough guide well, and had chance to compare to many of the other guide books out there, there are speciality books which cover other areas better and in more detail, some only available in chile. but of the mainstream guides this is definately the best. the cultural information is where the rough guides stand out, in fact a couple of our favorite places in Chile didnt even warrant a mention in one of the better known guide book series. the section on accomodation was the most lacking although occasionaly useful, as none of the guide books seem to have discovered the backpackers hostels which cover chile. but aside from this if you want a guide to chile, this is one of the best.

After studying in Chile and comparing different South American guide books, I found the Rough Guide to Chile to be the easiest to read and the most accurate. I normally buy the Lonely Planet on a Shoestring series, but was surprised and disappointed at how out-of-date many of the entries were. The Rough Guide gives you practical information and options, which I like.

My husband and I loved this book. We are senior citizens who wanted to spend a few days in Chile on our own, prior to a cuise around Cape Horn to Argentina. This guide gave us very accurate, detailed information in many areas: transportation, hotels, restaurants, sights. We used it during the cruise to tailor our own shore excursions. It contains every bit of information that you would need for a very enjoyable trip to Chile. Chile is safe, very modern, and beautiful. English is not common but people were friendly and very well educated. Take a phrase book along. If you speak Spanish, you will not want to leave. This is a better experience than Mexico.

If you're planning a trip to Chile (or wish you were) this is the book to get you ready. Dealing with everything from money exchange to lodgings to transportation, it has invaluable information to carry you from "tourist" to "traveler." The content is divided by geographical sections (much as the country itself is) to make it easier to plan a trip or get the specific information you need on a trip already planned. If you're interested in getting away from the escorted "back on the bus in five minutes" type of trip, this guide will get you there. There are wonderful descriptions of each region and its attractions, plus names, phone numbers and prices for food, lodging, transportation...even the location of the cambios de change for changing money, ATMs, and tourist informtion centers in each town.
We picked this up by chance in a local library and found it so valuable we're planning to purchase our own copy before our upcoming visit. We'll let you know how well it represented reality when we return!

While traveling for about 4 weeks (April/May '08) throughout Chile I came across many other travels toting around what they joking referred to as "The Bible." This "Bible" was basically any Lonely Planet guide that covered Chile in some way. (It's also referred to in this way because EVERYONE had a copy)

More often than not, though, after they leafed through my guide, The Rough Guide to Chile 3, they wanted to keep it or mentioned that it was simply more informative. (This also happened to me with The Rough Guide to Peru while traveling throughout Peru, obviously)

Also, I looked through the Insight Guide and Fodor's at a bookstore and felt this one superior.

Even with space and weight at a premium, I carried this book around with me always and I'm very glad that I did (I'm one of those ones who doesn't want to feel like he has missed a thing when traveling.) I definitely recommend this book.

The Rough Guide to Chile is a good guide book that offers more than its name suggests. I used it in Santiago, Valparaiso and Vina del Mar to discover what Chile could offer to a traveller. I got a chance to exchange information about other books on Chile, with the help of which some other visitors were, like me, trying to find out their way through the country. As far as the content is considered, the Rough Guide to Chile surpassed all of them. However, Chile is a fast-changing country: some attractions and places are classics, yet others come and go. The book requires minor updates for the latter. In addition, information about specific places--museums for example--is brief.

I used this guide to read up on Chile before going and as a guide during my seven weeks in Chile. I found it very helpful and informative. I recommend it.

Generally I have found the Rough Guide books to be the best for South America.

I've been a huge fan of Rough Guides and have used them extensively over the past 15 years or so while traveling to various countries. The Rough Guide to Chile 3 was a relative disappointment. Information is buried in text and hard to parse. I found the Fodor's to be much, much more useful to the extent that we just stopped looking at the Rough Guide at all after a few days. If you just want to glance at cities as you tour them and look for specific things to do (eat, stay, shop, etc.) this really isn't the book for you. We had a rental car and are huge fans of ad hoc touring and this guide wasn't really conducive to that at all.

We used the Rough Guide to Chile for planning (and executing) a 2 month journey through this amazing country, including to Easter Island. Without the rough Guide to Chile, we would have never seen the incredible places we did, eaten at the great restaurant, or slept in the best beds. This guide is a must companion for a trip to Chile.

The background and history provided is thorough. Using the simple maps you can quickly identify the general location of sights, but as mentioned by another reviewer, the maps are by no means thorough. That said, this is a guide book. It acts a a guide. Before travelling anywhere you should have a high quality map, and that is not something I expect from any book.

The tips in the Rough Guide to Chile are worth following. We went out of our way to discover little villages in the middle of mountains or deep in forests, never to be disappointed. The people were fantastic, the food was great, and the accommodation was of a very good standard.

Take note of some of the food tips in the book. No-one should go to Chile without eating Pachanga, a Baros Jarpa, a Baros Lucos, or a Completo. I wish we could take our book and go right on back.

Don't leave this on the shelf if you are heading to Chile!

I was a little disappointed with this Chile Rough Guide. Unlike my previous experience with other Rough Guides(Japan and India), this book's seemed a little thin on info. For example, the section on Torres Del Paine's W-circuit discussed only hiking in one direction whereas Lonely Planet's included info on both directions. There were a lot of missing details like that, and yet the book still seem to weight a little more than the Lonely Planet Chile. It's not terrible, but if I had to choose over again, I would go with Lonely Planet.