Rating: 
Summary: Estupendo!
Review: I bought the book from a bookstore in Heatrow Airport on the way to Santiago de Chile for a vacation. I started reading when I came back and found it quite interesting and felt that I did not see the real face of Chile. The book gives you details on the different geographies and cultures that she encountered on the way that no one would find in other travel books. I quite enjoyed it though sometimes I had some difficulty in understanding. I wish to be as brave as her. Thanks Sara for opening up the thin, strange, beautiful country to us!
Rating: 
Summary: A travelogue of dysthymia and binge drinking
Review: I bought this book to help in planning my trip to Chile. Unfortunately, much of it is about hanging out with backpackers and gringos. The author's depressive moods and hangovers are given way too much space and somehow taint the book - sometimes it feels like a psychiatric case study, we get to know intimately a not-very-nice person with narcissistic and brooding tendencies.
I left this book unfinished halfway through and then picked it up after my own trip. My own experience of Chile was very different - sunnier, happier, and of course very much briefer. The final chapters of the book, starting from Antarctica, are better. Maybe the book would be better had it been written the other way around. Or maybe just if someone with a lot less emotional baggage had written the same story.
Rating:
Summary: Too much space between the covers
Review: I came away from this book acutely aware of Ms. Wheeler's political leanings but with little insight into Chileans. The author struck me as quite immature and the book would have been better if she hadn't the desire to wear her politics on her sleeve. A travel writer - a good travel writer - ought to be free of the very prejudices Ms. Wheeler holds (e.g., her dislike of Australian men and Americans>. Although obviously talented, I hope this writer in time learns to write more about the places she visits and less about herself.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific book!
Review: I didn't want this fantastic book to end. I picked it because I know so little about South America (why did we study it so little in school??) It is factual enough about geography and sociology and politics and history to be worthwhile that way, but as entertainment it's superb. I just couldn't put it down, and regretted her trip ending. She tells enough about herself to be interesting but not tiresome. Some travel writing is really about the writer; not this time. She's a shrewd and appreciative observer in a wide gamut of settings. Her style of writing is very clear, quite interesting , and witty. It's a magical book and I'll read anything else she writes, no matter where she goes!
Rating:
Summary: Terrific book!
Review: I didn't want this fantastic book to end. I picked it because I know so little about South America (why did we study it so little in school??) It is factual enough about geography and sociology and politics and history to be worthwhile that way, but as entertainment it's superb. I just couldn't put it down, and regretted her trip ending. She tells enough about herself to be interesting but not tiresome. Some travel writing is really about the writer; not this time. She's a shrewd and appreciative observer in a wide gamut of settings. Her style of writing is very clear, quite interesting , and witty. It's a magical book and I'll read anything else she writes, no matter where she goes!
Rating: 
Summary: I'm glad this book was written.
Review: I enjoyed this book, having selected it in the travel section because of a fascination with South America since visiting my sister in Brazil and later my wife and I visiting friends in Peru. Chile is particularly interesting because of the unique stretched geography. When I read travel writing I want the writer to be a real person, and Sara Wheeler is. If I wanted a guidebook I would buy one. I don't need pedantic liberal condescending whining either, just tell it like you see it, with a little writerly flourish and a bit of dry wit, which she does, and I for one appreciate it. I think most readers of this book understand that people are people. And anybody who doesn't take advantage of the wine and pisco when in Chile, like her dorky traveling companion who "forgot" to buy the wine, is weird. The people who don't like this book probably don't like Paul Theroux either. The writer did manage to use some words which I never heard before, such as "amaranthine," and some which I think perhaps don't exist, such as "anaglyptic." This, in my book, adds to her qualifications. Let's have some fun with travel writing! One thing, though, that got me is her reference to North America and Europe as "the West," as though South America isn't "the West" as well!
Rating: 
Summary: Very discriptive but too many personal political views.
Review: I find the political views of Ms. Wheeler's Great Britian angle is annoying, although she emphasizes that this is her own observation about the country. If she could limit her elaboration of her obvious drinking problem and other intimate personal matters, this should be a wonderful book for readers who have never been to this amazing country.
Rating:
Summary: A book for which you will want to thank her for writing.
Review: I finished this book only a day after I had discovered it on a friends bookshelf, but even before the end I had this incredible urge to try and phone Sara Wheeler to thank her for an amazing book. Seldom have I ever book a book down and thought to myself, 'thank the stars that this book is out there for other people to discover', and trust me it will be a rare treat for those who do. I now have two travel books to unreservedly recommend to friends, this one and Eric Newby's 'Slowly Down the Ganges'. Sara, if ever we are in someone else's neck of the woods at the same time I'll buy you a beer or twelve!
Rating:
Summary: An in-depth description of a very interesting country.
Review: I found this book very interesting in describing the cultures, geography and customs of Chile. At certain times the book went into too much detail for my liking but on the whole I found it very interesting. It is not only a book about Chile but about travelling, itself, in ChileI received it as a present as I am intending to travel to Chile in a year and the book has only further fuelled my interest about the country.
Rating:
Summary: One of the few good travel essays on Chile
Review: I have spent a considerable amount of time in Chile, both for work and for travel. My trips have covered the country from Arica in the North to Cape Horn in the South, from the Pacific Coast to the high Andes. Wheeler's book, which I found in a bookshop in Cape Town a few years ago, presents a beautiful, humorous, unflinching portrait of a country and its people. For a place that offers so many opportunities and adventures to the traveller, it is surprising how little has been written (in English) about the country and its people. There are some mis-statements in the book, but by and large it makes an excellent companion to a typical "country guidebook".
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