No comments about Santa Cruz / Tierra Del Fugeo / Chile Sur.

No comments about Modern Argentina, the El Dorado of to-day;: With notes on Uruguay and Chile,.

No comments about Through five republics (of South America): A critical description of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela in 1905;.

3 comments about Fodor's Chile, 2nd Edition (Fodor's Gold Guides).

1. This book caused us many problems during our visit to Argentina. First of all, it is out of date........by years. Restaurants no longer exist in one case we were told at least 5 years. Hotels completely changed ownership and management, again many years ago. The monetary system completely changed.



2. We bought this book for a trip we took to Chile and tossed it...by the first week. Their recommendations are substandard and the information contained in the book is very limited. I am wondering if they ever visited Chile before they printed this book. If you are looking for a very comprehensive guide book on Chile check out "Chile Experience Travel Guide" ISBN 956-7264-79-1



3. I think this is a great book. I stayed in Chile for about 5 months and I took this guide everywhere and it was always very helpful. The only thing I didn't like was that the restaurants and hotels recommended are always kind of expensive, well at lest for students they are. I lent it to a friend who also stayed there for a long period and when he returned it he said he also liked it. It covers all of Chile's regions (even Easter Island) and it has a lot of information of each. They even include information on when you should visit certain places, like when you can see the penguins in the south or when you should visit the desert in the north.
   
   PS.- There is a review that says something about Argentina, non-existing hotels and restaurants and changes in monetary system... I don't think that comment has anything to do with Fodor's Chile Guide and I can assure you that this guide is really NOT OUTDATED AND CERTAINLY NOT MISLEADING.

5 comments about The uttermost part of the earth.

1. Lucas Bridges spent his life walking on eggshells in my opinion. He loved his adopted people the Yaghans and the Ona, yet he was never far away from his potential death in the many encounters he had with them. His book shows this tension at every turn. His ability to recall specific events and name the people is admirable. I recommend this book and a visit to his beloved Tierra Del Fuego. Although I did not get to his Harberton, I am incredibly fascinated with Ushuaia and surrounds, especially the mountain views. As a kid in Canada I watched Cowboys and Indians in movies and always I cheered for the Indians. Living now in New Zealand I cheer the Maori. The colonists called all the natives they met in all the continents "Indians" but now the native people have their own names.



2. A year ago we visited Ushuaia and Estancia Harberton, where memories of the Bridges family are very much alive. (We were shown about Harberton by the great-great-grandson of Thomas Bridges.) We were very anxious to acquire a copy of Lucas Bridges's book, but it was out of print, even in its Spanish edition. So we were delighted when we discovered on Amazon that it was about to be published in a new hardcover edition, and even more delighted when we received the book and realized that Natalie Goodall (the grandmother of our 2007 tour guide) had written a new introduction and epilogue for it. The book will be doubly treasured, for the information it contains and the associations it brings. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford



3. How Tierra del Fuego was settled.
   The folly of early missionary work.
   An anthropolocial study of the native people.
   The the hard ships and joys of settling a new land;
   
   But at its heart a narrative by Mr. Bridges on himself and his family who possessed a love for its native peoples and land that came to define them. And Alas it's a tale of the progression of civilization and the displacement (absorption) of native cultures that has played out across this globe.
   Thanks Mr. Bridges



4. This book is about the colonization of Ushuaia, the southernmost town in the world. Although every account is 100% non-fiction, reading it was a magical journey between the real and surreal. One moment you're taken on an exploratory expedition, and the next you're learning the mysterious and mythical ways of the native Ona indians and the author's fantastic ability to befriend them, penetrate their culture and become a real life "Running with Wolves" character. A must read for anyone thinking about visiting Ushuaia.



5. Es quizá el libro más inspirador que se haya escrito sobre Tierra del Fuego, su historia, sus habitantes originarios, el encuentro de dos culturas. Entrega una lección para las futuras generaciones sobre cómo enfrentar nuestra presencia actual en la zona, de manera de proyectar un futuro cooperativo, sustentable y positivo no sólo para Tierra del Fuego, sino para gran parte de este planeta.

No comments about Getting to know Chile.

No comments about Chile, Geografia Extrema.

5 comments about Between Extremes: A Journey Beyond Imagination.

1. I am a Brit currently living in Chile - and this book was a disappointment to me. It failed miserable to convey the beauty of the country. I felt it was a book more about the friendship of these two man rather than about the country they were exploring.

   I found it was a refreshing change to see the different view points of the authors - set out section by section rather then the thoughts of the two mingled together. However - Mr Keenan was annoying the heck out of me by the end of the book. He obviously didn't want to be on this trip. He made miserable reading and I felt sorry for Mr McCarthy and his more upbeat endeavours. Someone should explain to Mr Keenan that Pablo Neruda's poety is worth reading - there is no doubt - but there is so much more to Chile this one man. In addition - he is not the only chilean poet to have achieved international recognition. Gabriel Mistral ring any bells?

   This country is incredible - from the driest dessert in the world to the icy ridden south. It is breathtakingly beautiful - it's people so different in each region - the scenery so distinct from north to south. I felt that none of that came across. You should only read this books if you are interested in the friendship of these two men. If you want to know about Chile - there are better books out there - books which convey something of the country and all its people.




2. This is a hilarious and moving tall (but true) tale about two men who had a dream and decided to go out and live it. Keenan and McCarthy came up with the idea of having a farm in Patagonia while still hostages in Beirut. Several years after their release, they decided to go to Chile and see how workable their dream was. The results were mixed but in the process, they managed to put a period to their time in captivity, learned far more about their respective heroes Bernardo O'Higgins and Pablo Neruda than they had hoped and discovered that they could still be great friends when not stuck together inside a dark, tiny room. Their travelogue is funny, frank, fractious and familiar to anyone who has traveled second-class in a country where the infrastructure is iffy. Definitely give this book a try.



3. I found this a funny, emotional, fantastic and honest description of a unique country. I have lived and worked in Chile now for 8 months and similar to the style of the two mens writing; (of Chile) I love it and loath it. It is not an optimistic over the top view of all things amazing and beautiful about Chile, and for this, I feel it is more real and honest. As they say, there are things that disappointed and annoyed them about Chile and the people, yet so many times things that happily exceeded any of their expectations. Which is exactly my sentiments about Chile and their people. At times the two writers do seem emotionally overdescriptive, dragging on about how they dreamed it would be and how Neruda described is beloved country, or how their minds were blown by something seemingly unimportant. But again, the amount of times I find I can't pinpoint well enough why these seemingly minor things move me so much, these two rather differently styled writers have perfectly articulated my sentiments.
   
   Different strokes for different folks. Just as I understand why some people wouldn't/don't like Chile and others who would rave about it. I can see some people loving this book and others not.



4. This book is the story of a journey and of a friendship born of adverse circumstances. The time they spent as hostages gives Brian Keenan and John McCarthy an authority which they wear extremely lightly. This contrasts with the more recent posturing of the 'Neocons' who could be said to have got the world into this mess in Iraq.
   
   There is an enviable easiness and a lack of bitterness towards their captors which gives this book a moral stature which has been lacking in more recent debate of the situation in the Middle East.



5. The authors - one English, one Irish - have a certain celebrity status, having been kidnap victims in Lebanon in the late eighties. This was the reason I bought the book, I probably won't have bought the book for its content alone. The central conceit of the book is that, while in Lebanon, they had imagined the landscape of Patagonia and this had kept them going. The book is a description of their actual journey through Chile to Patagonia, its delights and disappointments, with some stray reflections on their captivity and the comradeship which it induced in them. From what I knew of them before I read the book John McCarthy is a quick-witted Englishman from whom I would have expected many jokes, but not much insight, while Brian Keenan seemed to me to be quite reflective and serious.
   The journey starts in Northern Chile, a barren region, with significant mining interests and border tensions with Peru. The book consists of intertwined pieces from each man's journal - sometimes describing the same incident; its possible to get some idea of each personality from the contrasts between their entries. As expected McCarthy is more straightforwardly descriptive, and he comes across as the organiser, planner of the pair. I warmed to his personality though, as he was both realistic and generous in his descriptions of Keenan, and of his admiration of ,and debt to, his friend. Keenan, on the other hand, I liked less as I read more. Keenan adopts a conceit that he has `spiritual guides' on the journey - one being Bernardo O'Higgins an revolutionary founder of Chile in the 1800's, the other being Pablo Neruda, a famous Twentieth Century Chilean poet , three volumes of whose work Keenan quotes from through the book. I felt his speculations about these `guides' were overdone, it seemed to me that Keenan was trying to affect an intellectual air and the overall tone was contrived. In the flesh, he seemed to snore and swear and be generally disorganised and somewhat boorish, so I thought this was too much of a contrast.
   In general, neither man seemed to have warmed to the journey. Keenan seemed the more inspired by Chile, but both journals emphasized the tedium and hardship of the travel arrangements - McCarthy gently emphasized Keenan's snoring. I was quite disappointed that neither man mentioned much about what happened to them in the years after their release; while I could understand their need for privacy, there is the fact that the book is trading on the public's curiosity about them, as much as it is a travel book. They actually mention meeting someone who has read Keenan's book about his captivity, who criticizes him for not putting in a afterword describing how he adjusted on this release, Keenan makes the point that he needs privacy. In particular the campaign to seek John McCarthy's release had been run by his then-girlfriend Jill Morrell, a campaign which lasted five years. Yet there is a silence about this, McCarthy refers to `Anne' periodically, who I presume is his partner now.

No comments about Paradise Found, and Lost: Odyssey in Chile.

No comments about South Sea sketches;: A narrative,.