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Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile (Modern Library) | 
 enlarge | Author: Sara Wheeler
Publisher: Modern Library
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 79321
Media: Paperback
Edition: Modern Lib
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0375753656
Dewey Decimal Number: 918.30466
EAN: 9780375753657
ASIN: 0375753656
Publication Date: March 16, 1999
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Squeezed between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2,600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide--not a country that lends itself to maps, as Sara Wheeler discovered when she traveled alone from the top to the bottom, from the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica. Eloquent, astute, nimble with history and deftly amusing, Travels in a Thin Country established Sara Wheeler as one of the very best travel writers in the world.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Walking on a thin line August 26, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Since I did a similar trip to the one in this book a few years ago, I was curious to see whether Sara and I also had the same experience. We didn't.
Whereas I just left home, Sara apparently first spent much time learning Spanish and gathering a network of contacts in Chile, including a number of official tourist offices that gave her free or cheap accommodation and transportation, very briefly mentioned here and there. Her contacts in Santiago, some at the British Embassy and some filthy rich families, Chile's de facto aristocracy, gives her access to interesting people and a level of luxury that "normal" travellers seldom encounter.
So reading the book is not the best way to figure out what you can expect to see and do on your own trip through Chile. Nevertheless there's a lot of background information about the country which may be useful to you. Also because she did her trip in the early 1990s, so a LOT has changed since then. All the destinations she mentions are still very much open to tourism, and you get a general idea of what they are like. I was disappointed that she only spent half a day in Torres del Paine, which to me was the most beautiful spot in the country. Also, she goes to "Chilean Antarctica", but there's not much of value to be gathered from reading her account of it. She only spent one day there, being guided by Chilean officials in and around a tiny settlement.
Sometimes she's funny in a very British manner, but it rarely lasts more than one sentence at a time. One of the other reviewers appears to find Sara rather promiscuous, going off with one man after the other on, well, overnight adventures to remote places. I often travel like that, and although it may seem like a stupid/crazy thing to do to some people, travelling in certain regions often means suddenly sharing a car/tent/meal with people you just met the day before. Although I'm sure there must have been short-term romance in the air at times, I certainly don't think less of Sara for not "admitting" it in her book. It just wouldn't add any value to the tale.
 so how many beaus were there on the trip March 22, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I read the book and thought it dullish-
I agree with the previous reviewer that it did not come to life.
I also thought the book dishonest. Sara had what appeared to be a long line of lovers on this trip- a man named Pepe that she slept on a deserted island with, yet there is no mention of sex or how most of these men came into her trip or out of it.
some of her ideas, like spending two nights with three Chilian police officers was down right stupid or hitchhiking with Bolivian loggers. I wonder if she knows that many men in many cultures have one word for this kind of woman?
Not that I care whether she did or not, but she took risks that seemed
stupid- and I dont appreciate her withholding the truth,especially when
other women might think she gave them the green light and then they end
up raped.
so did Sara have a love life that she hid in a prudish manner?
Seeing how much she was holding back , made me realize she was writing
a clean-up dull version that Hallmark or Her Mother would approve of.
 kept the magic of Chile alive... March 15, 2006
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I disagree with the other reviewer's comments who felt he had to slog through the book waiting for it to payoff. I thoroughly enjoyed Sara Wheeler's writing on Chile and reccomend this book to anyone who has traveled to Chile or is contemplating a trip.
I started reading her book at the end of a 2-week adventure in Chile and many of her comments and thoughts resonated with my own experiences in Chile. I hated to leave the country and its beauty behind, but her book allowed me to retain and relive the magic of my own trip for another week+ as I savored her writing.
 Planes, Trains, and Stereotypes February 20, 2006
8 out of 15 found this review helpful
This is one of those books that you keep reading for the promise of things to come...but it never delivers. The idea of accompanying the writer on her travels from north to south in "a thin country" is a compelling one. Unfortunately, the writing is not.
The writer spends a great deal of the book writing about the trials and travails in getting from point A to point B, never fully focusing on the beauty of the destination or the people. How can you write about a Chile and fail to convey the sense of incomparable beauty that most travelers see?
Now, I understand that there are travel writers who write about the journey and not the destination. So this could have been one of those humorous, roll-with-the-punches travel tales. But it wasn't that either. Instead,the journey stories were tedious and sounded a lot like complaining.
To the book's credit, a great deal of Chilean history is interspersed throughout the book, but this, too, ends ups sounding like a high school textbook. Prosaic and repetitive, the history offered never comes to life.
But I hate to give up on a book, so I slogged through 3/4 of it, riding along from the northern reaches of Atacama all the way to Antarctica. And, then, this:
"Each country transports its culture to the bottom of the world when it sets up in Antarctica - the good and the bad. In Bellinghausen the piles of rubbish, the acres of mud, the puffy faced men with silver teeth, the ghostly outlines of the metal letters CCCP which had been clumsily jimmied off the doors, the abandoned machinery of failed scientific projects, the one minuscule and inadequate Lada - well, they were Russian all right."
Up until now I've generally thought of most travelers as an enlightened bunch, people who can see beyond cultural stereotypes...but this writer managed to cram every available negative Russian stereotype into one telling sentence. Telling, because it revealed more about the writer, in my opinion, than Russian culture.
And, come to think of it, there were quite a few negative comments about the Chilean people as well. They were frequently referred to as insecure and self-obsessed.
This is when I decided to throw in the towel. This was one journey I no longer wanted to participate in.
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