Berkley Center

The second longest and certainly narrowest country in the world, Chile is a stunningly diverse and beautiful country. Its natural borders are fearsome: the Atacama Desert to the north, the Andes Mountains to the east, the Antarctic Ocean to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west all conspire to make the country virtually an island on the continent of South America. In a country with so much natural beauty and with such long distances, you might think that Chileans would be frequent fliers, given the plethora of beautiful places and the huge distances in between them. Nevertheless, for a host of reasons, most Chileans have seen very little of their country.

The motto of Sky Airlines, the cheaper of Chile’s only two airlines, is chilenos viajando por Chile, or “Chileans traveling in Chile.” While this may at first be a surprising slogan for a marketing campaign, it makes complete sense in respect to the relative inaccessibility of leisure travel in the country. Length alone makes travel hard enough. From the northern desert to the southern glaciers Chile spans 2,670 miles. The daily reality of a Chilean living in hot and dry Arica in the north in comparison to that of a Chilean in frigid and stormy Punta Arenas in the south has little in common. Perhaps that is why the government is so centralized: everything of any national importance is located in the capital, Santiago, in Chile’s zona central, and the majority of news even on local channels covers Santiago.

The other reason that so few Chileans travel is, of course, economic. While Chile may be one of the most “developed” economies in Latin America, whatever one denotes with the term, the average Chilean doesn’t possess nearly as much wealth as the average American or western European. Simply put, many Chileans just can’t afford to travel very often. Buses are the most popular mode of transit, as they are cheaper, reliable, and relatively fast, but to travel the whole length of the country by bus is not truly feasible for people with little time away from work. Perhaps it is because of its relative economic inaccessibility that there isn’t a strong travel culture in Chile.

Travel to any of Chile’s many tourist highlights, however, and you’ll feel like you’re in a completely different country. In San Pedro in the Atacama or in Puerto Natales in Patagonia you hear more English and German spoken than Spanish. The American dollar is accepted as legitimate currency, information talks are given in English, and everywhere you look there are people with hiking backpacks and Chacos. In San Pedro the one Chilean couple we met complained that they weren’t even in their own country. I can’t count the number of times when I’ve been asked where I’ve traveled this semester and the Chilean asking responds with “Wow, you’ve seen more of Chile than I have!” Only a handful of Chileans that I met had been outside of the Chile-Argentina-Brazil radius.

Of course, this is not to say that no Chileans travel. They do. Adults, children, students, professionals...there are Chileans to be found in most places enjoying what their country has to offer. University students go backpacking in Torres del Paine when classes end, and often schools do class trips at the end of eighth grade. Santiaguinos go to the south, and students from rural regions go to Santiago. Nevertheless, there is a definite insularity in Chile, perhaps because it has been historically so inaccessible to the outside world, perhaps because that’s just the culture, or perhaps because travel is a luxury. Whether foreigners will continue to be the main group of travelers in Chile or whether more Chileans will be able to explore their own country in the future better remains to be seen. For now, English and the weary backpacker still dominate the travel sector.