Every other Sunday we are taking a look at the world of books. I read a lot and always want to share my opinions on what I read, so I thought it would be fun to write reviews. Today we are looking at a book that talks about travelling around Chile.

Chile: Travels In A Thin Country  (2006)

Sara Wheeler 

Synopsis

Squeezed in 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 which lends itself to maps, as Sara Wheeler found out when she travelled alone with two carpetbags from the top to the bottom, form the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica.

This is Sara Wheeler’s account of a six-month odyssey which included Christmas Day at 13,000 feet with a llama sandwich, a sex hotel in Santiago and a trip round Cape Horn delivering a coffin. Eloquent, astute and amusing, CHILE: TRAVELS IN A THIN COUNTRY confirms Sara Wheeler’s place in the front rank of today’s travel writers.

– from Waterstones

Positive Points

This book is an interesting read if you want to learn more about the country of Chile as it goes in detail about the stretch of the country and there is a section that you may enjoy for everyone. The highlights for me personally were the chapters about Antarctica, the North of Chile and the islands.

Negative Points

The one thing that I did not like about this book was that there was no photographs, which was a shame because it is always nice to have these alongside a travel book so you can get an idea as to what happened on the trip. I read this on Kindle, so it may be an error with the e-book and the real version may have photographs but I was not a fan that there wasn’t any and I had to keep Googling locations to get an idea as to what they looked like. Another thing that I was not a fan of was that at times the book felt a bit confused – sometimes it was really focussed on the travel and then it would go into these stories about the people or friends that she has and some times they were not relevant.

Overall Review

If you are looking for a book that gives you some idea of what Chile is like and the way it’s history has had an impact on the way it is then this is a book you may find interesting to read. I went into this book after reading another book by a different author about the South America’s and chose this book because it did not include Chile, I do find that this book was missing a lot and that my attention just could not seem to keep with the book and I think it is because of the way it was written. It is an interstinf read but I think I would prefer to read a different story by someone else.

Rating : *** 3 Stars