Driving to Argentina from Santiago

Have you been wondering if the grass is greener on the other side?

Has everyone you know gone and you’re (again) the last to go?

Then get ready to get yourself across the border to Argentina, crossing the Andes along the way.

We’ll assume you’ll be driving, either your own car or a rental.

First, you’ll need to get [...]

What should we do tonight?

…A most urgent question, posed many a newly-arrived expat.  Here are links to a few web sites that have the latest and most complete info on entertainment and nightlife in Chile.  Santiago gets the focus, as usual, but most of the sites include regional events as well.

Revolver Magazine AgendaBy far the most complete English resource [...]

Things to do in Chile before you die

Things to do in Chile before you die… or leave, never to return again.  But how could you ever say you’re never coming back to Chile?

This is an open article, meaning everybody writes it. The idea is to make the big list of the best of the best, unconstrained by the requirements of travel guide [...]

Your first mission: leave the airport

While Santiago can seem like a big, slightly scary city at first glance, it’s still the safest capital in South America, and probably on par with a lot of US cities.

But what’s the first thing that greets a newcomer at the airport?

Taxi drivers, droves of them.

Most are good, but a few bad apples try to [...]

Buying a travel guide

Despite the wealth of travel information about any country you can find on the web, most travelers feel more comfortable with a printed guidebook in hand when they first arrive. It goes anywhere and requires no electricity or internet connection. More importantly, it is a professionally fact-checked resource that, depending on the number of editions [...]

Urban biking

An almost-finished bike path in Ñuñoa, 06/2009

The crosstown traffic’s atrocious, Transantiago takes forever, and you’re not quite rich enough to take a taxi to work every day*. How about biking?

At the turn of the millennium, biking as transportation in Santiago wasn’t a viable alternative for most people due mainly to the lack of [...]