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Chargement... Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile (Modern Library (Paperback)) (édition 1999)par Sara Wheeler
Information sur l'oeuvreChile: Travels in a Thin Country par Sara Wheeler
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. I will be traveling in Chile next week and I wanted to have a good, on the ground resource for my travels. This certainly did the job. I really like how she included maps of where she was traveling and moving through the country from north to south. All aspects of the country seem to be covered, the history, the culture, the languages, the economy and commerce and education, including the spiritual and religious influences. Sara is a masterful travel writer. I plan to read all of her writings. ( ) I think our desire for travel can be summed up by one of Wheeler's first sentences in Travels in a Thin Country, "Our collective ignorance appealed to my curiosity" (p 3). It's the reason most of us want to travel, to abolish an innate ignorance of the world around us. I admired Wheeler's bravery for jumping into a journey down Chile's entire length, all the way to the Antarctica end, without a solid plan in place. Her travel is motivated mostly by the seat of her pants and held up by the kindness of strangers. Interwoven in the adventure is a strong sense of political and cultural history of the region. I wanted photography to back up Wheeler's gorgeous descriptions of the people and landscapes she traveled through. “Chile: Travels in a Thin Country” (1994) is Sara Wheeler’s account of a trip from north to south Chile, Ms Wheeler writes easily (although the occasional “wrinkled hills transmogrified into brown shale”, “the candelabra cacti”, and the “fecund valley floor”, all in one paragraph, may suggest otherwise), but her observations lack the depth of a good travel book, and focus too much on Ms Wheeler herself, and the variety of travel partners she encounters. Some of the local characters are very interesting, but she more often than not forgets to exploit the full potential of these contacts, we never get to know what they really think, how they really fit in. Likewise, occasionally she stumbles onto an interesting historical subject, which she then fails to explore to the full: it never gets beyond what you find in the average travel guide. I read the first half of the book, relevant to my upcoming trip, and then put it away. I don’t think I will ever finish it. This is probably a 4 star but have only rated it 3 because I don't really know how to review it. I enjoyed it totally = Wheeler writes well and has combined a heck of a lot of history with documenting her travels through Chile. For someone about to go to Chile it would be invaluable (if a little dated) - I mean don't rely too much on her transport timetables since that would be changed in the years since she wrote it) although I get the feeling progress is slow due to the nature of the terrain. I would have liked an historical timeline maybe in the index but it wasn't that kind of book. In the context of her travels she quotes a fair number of authors from Chile and/or other books to read regarding historical aspects and for that reason alone it's worthwhile to have on your shelf if you are interested in the country. She mentions Bruce Chatwin's Patagonia as still being relevant to travellers in Chile and I hope to track that down sometime soon. There are so many incidents she recounts that touch the heart in many ways - covering the geography, history, politics and humanity of the country it is impossible to single any one out here. Chile is one of those places that not many people seem to know much about. While reading this the student riots there were happening and so I could relate to what I saw on the news. I was impressed that Wheeler was able to wrangle herself down to the Chilean South Pole base and her commitment to venturing further into the unknown Chile than many tourists do. $2 today 11/7/11 aucune critique | ajouter une critique
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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 easily to maps. Nor, as Sara Wheeler found out, does it easily lend itself to a lone woman with two carpetbags who wishes to travel from the top to the bottom, from the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica. Yet, despite bureaucratic, geographic and climatic setbacks, Sara Wheeler managed to complete that journey in six months, discovering en route a country that is quite extraordinarily diverse. This improbable ribbon of land has been home to Andean tribes who remain the most scientifically neglected people in the world; it has been conquered by conquistadores, pillaged by Sir Francis Drake (no hero in Chile), exploited by foreign imperialists, blighted by the Panama Canal, governed by the world's first democratically-elected Marxist president and stamped upon by one of this century's most reviled dictators. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)918.30466History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in South America ChileClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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