Rating: 
Summary: Excellent travel writing
Review: Sara Wheeler is a compelling travel writer. Being British she does have an odd twist to the language, at least for this North American reader. She travels well, meets interesting people and is no shrinking violet in visiting the out-of-the-ordinary. Her sensibilities regarding the reprehensible Pinochet regime are current, especially considering her own country's recent actions toward the old goat. Sara Wheeler has a good travel eye and she reads very well. I personally hope to meet up with her somewhere along the line and enjoy a cold one with her. Thanks for a really good read.
Rating: 
Summary: good (ish) tour of chile, but somewhat contrived
Review: Sara Wheelers travels in a thin country is a reasonable travel book through Chile, but it is certainly not an authoritive guide. Having traveled most of the route she chooses, from North to South, prior to reading the book, it was easy to relate to many of her encounters and expeditions. And as such the book serves as a nice reminder, The problem with the book, is that is has been written soley with the ambition of creating a travel book, and this is the reason she set of to Chile in the first place. It lacks a real focus, and it is yet another journalist travels through country to write travel book epic.
The other thing which is striking is the better than thou attitide she displays to other travellers in Chile, she decides not to experience many of the highlights of the gringo trail through Chile such as torees del paine, as she isnt fond of nanging around other gringo backpackers, the excuse she gives is that she has somehow managed to get herself onto a cargo ship north, which is in fact a main route north for backpackers, of course once the captain of the ship finds out she is a journalist he offers to remove her from the confines of the other squalid backpackers, and so on.
Chile is an amzing country and one of the best places to travel on earth, this book certainly is insightful, but theres much more.
Rating: 
Summary: How to travel around Chile in a bad mood: A Guide.
Review: Wheeler exhibits an admirable sense of trip curiosity. She has a keen eye for observation that does justice to the amazing country she crosses. She effectively builds up our anticipation of the glaciers and the icefields of the south of the country throughout the book as well. But for all that curiosity, she kept coming up with inventive ways to alienate her audience. I tried to put my personality issues with her aside and enjoy the travelogue but her low tolerance for travel situations kept returning to the narrative. She seemed to go on the trip preparing to be annoyed, and many things she came across helped her fulfill that prophecy. She was annoyed by travel companions, who were then vilified in her book. She was annoyed by long dusty bus trips, machismo issues, etc. She was annoyed by the lack of British precision when it came to bus/train schedules. And she kept quoting Bruce Chatwin, a truly brilliant writer who also wrote a book about Chile, as if she was trying to crab her way into his company. By the end of the book I was getting so annoyed that I started wishing she would run out of money and wouldn't get a chance to experience the south. This woman has a huge chip on her shoulder that undermined the narrative and prevented me from enjoying the read. If you are interested in this part of the world, please read something instead of this! Start with Chatwin's "Travels in Patagonia." You'll be much happier.
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