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Moon Spotlight Tierra del Fuego & Chilean Patagonia is a 70-page compact guide covering these southernmost regions of South America. Author Wayne Bernhardson offers his seasoned advice on what sights are must-sees and includes maps with sightseeing highlights so planning your time is easy. This lightweight guide is packed with recommendations on sights, entertainment, shopping, recreations, accommodations, food, and transportation. Helpful maps make navigating these stunning destinations uncomplicated.
Moon Spotlight guides are affordably-priced, lightweight guides covering a smaller geographic region than the Moon Handbooks or Outdoors guidebook series. The travel content in a Spotlight guide is pulled directly from individual chap
Review by Vell Bruixot for Moon Spotlight Tierra del Fuego and Chilean Patagonia
Rating: 
The publication date for this handy little book is 2009, but like all published material on travel destinations, it was out of date before it hit the sellers. For example, the author indicates that the cost for non-Chileans to enter Torres del Paine is US per person when in fact it is nearly (2009 season). The mentioned Puerto Natales hotel Australis burned and went out of service in 2008 (though by December 2009 it seems to be at least partly operational again. It was seriously damaged because, like most buildings in southern Chilean Patagonia, there is little understanding of proper fire-containment construction and proper use of materials. )
The Super Mix grocery store in Natales, described in the book, went out of business long ago and its niche has been largely taken by the Unimarc in a nearby location.
The location given for the Natalino restaurant “Marítimo” is long out of date, having moved from the costanera up to the centre of the town and at the same time losing most justification for being included as a recommendation. There is an interesting story here: the operator of the Maritimo ignored the eviction from the costanera location for too long and one day all his cooking and other items were found simply launched out of the building into the street!
Café Evasión is listed as a “moderately priced café restaurant” but it should be more accurately described as a remarkably smoky bar that also serves uninspired food and at a pace that requires saintly patience.
I rate the book attempt as “pretty good” for something written by a person who is not from Patagonia and who evidently doesn’t even live in South America. It’s a smallish book, at 80 pages, but there is enough material to make it both interesting and generally useful for those who might focus on just this region and don’t want to haul a larger guidebook. Many of the entries sound as though the author may have had first-hand experience at one time. He accurately describes some of the places where I take my own guests when I am doing guided trips down here.
There are a few glitches in the book that suggest sloppy publication practices, including faulty proofreading (for example, the heading for Puerto Natales reads “Puerto Natalesle.”) There are some good insights that help explain economic conditions in certain of the locations described.
But there are also annoyances, such as the author’s insistence in having “uttermost part of the earth” inserted in the text on virtually every page, while evidently never understanding the biblical source of the expression, attributing it instead to one of the early settlers. Similarly, the architectural style of the freezer plant at Puerto Bories is industrial Post-Victorian (according to Dr. Mac-Lean, owner of the property) rather than “Magellanic” as the author indicated. (The author’s bio claims that he attended UC Berkley, so I might have expected somewhat better scholarship).
There are other misunderstandings as well, often referred to in the trade as “errors.” The author indicates that a boat tour up Last Hope Sound allows a walk to the face of the Balmaceda glacier, when in fact the trail does not lead there but to the Serrano glacier instead (approaching the Balmaceda glacier requires technical rock climbing skills and equipment).
The author also gives the wrong year date for the territorial dispute between Chile and Argentine that nearly erupted into war (stated as 1979, it was actually in 1978 that the two nations sent naval forces against one another, failed to engage due largely to bad weather, and thereafter did not re-initiate active hostilities while papal intervention and arbitration were employed).
The author also states that the power plant at the large freezer plant at Puerto Bories in Chile in the old freezer complex still works. The internal power plant at Bories is not used or even connected and has not been for many years. Such errors don’t materially detract from the basic utility of the book for most short-term travelers.
Some years ago I translated some of the materials for that freezer plant museum at Bories. The material is available for download at the museum website (which could have been cited in this book). For those who may be interested, the diesel powered generators were based first on a Ruston 6 cylinder engine, and in 1970 the plant received a 205 horsepower Caterpillar power plant which could produce up to 125 kW-hr. Both of these engines are on non-functioning static display at the museum, which receives its electrical power nowadays, as it has for years, from the electrical utility, EDELMAG.
Information given about the Bories freezer plant (frigorifico) being expropriated by the Allende administration is also misleading. The 1971 expropriations in Patagonia and elsewhere in Chile were done under an agrarian reform program developed under the Frei administration. The plant was later returned to private ownership. For more on that topic, read “Expropriation in Chile under the Frei agrarian reform” by Joseph R. Thome.
Oh, by the way: that freezer plant area is in the process of getting a new luxury hotel.
There are many improvements that could be added to guidebooks that attempt to describe the tourism aspects of this region. One is that many travelers these days want to know what coffee shops and hotels offer wi-fi. Another is the long-overdue (or understated) mention that the NAVIMAG ferry ships that run between Natales and Pto Montt are in fact cattle ships with sort of afterthought passenger service. The erratic nature of NAVIMAG service (largely due to breakdowns in the ships) should be emphasized.
Getting the distances right is always desirable. Likewise, there is no longer an excuse for serious guide books to not supply GPS coordinates for important and/or particularly hard-to-find locations.
Travel guides written by Americans are notorious for nonsense statements. Here is one: “Distances in Chilean Patagonia are shorter than in Argentina…” Believe it or not, a kilometer in Chile is the same as a kilometer in Argentina !!
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Review by Vell Bruixot for Moon Spotlight Tierra del Fuego and Chilean Patagonia
Rating:
The publication date for this handy little book is 2009, but like all published material on travel destinations, it was out of date before it hit the sellers. For example, the author indicates that the cost for non-Chileans to enter Torres del Paine is US$19 per person when in fact it is nearly $30 (2009 season). The mentioned Puerto Natales hotel Australis burned and went out of service in 2008 (though by December 2009 it seems to be at least partly operational again. It was seriously damaged because, like most buildings in southern Chilean Patagonia, there is little understanding of proper fire-containment construction and proper use of materials. )
The Super Mix grocery store in Natales, described in the book, went out of business long ago and its niche has been largely taken by the Unimarc in a nearby location.
The location given for the Natalino restaurant “Marítimo” is long out of date, having moved from the costanera up to the centre of the town and at the same time losing most justification for being included as a recommendation. There is an interesting story here: the operator of the Maritimo ignored the eviction from the costanera location for too long and one day all his cooking and other items were found simply launched out of the building into the street!
Café Evasión is listed as a “moderately priced café restaurant” but it should be more accurately described as a remarkably smoky bar that also serves uninspired food and at a pace that requires saintly patience.
I rate the book attempt as “pretty good” for something written by a person who is not from Patagonia and who evidently doesn’t even live in South America. It’s a smallish book, at 80 pages, but there is enough material to make it both interesting and generally useful for those who might focus on just this region and don’t want to haul a larger guidebook. Many of the entries sound as though the author may have had first-hand experience at one time. He accurately describes some of the places where I take my own guests when I am doing guided trips down here.
There are a few glitches in the book that suggest sloppy publication practices, including faulty proofreading (for example, the heading for Puerto Natales reads “Puerto Natalesle.”) There are some good insights that help explain economic conditions in certain of the locations described.
But there are also annoyances, such as the author’s insistence in having “uttermost part of the earth” inserted in the text on virtually every page, while evidently never understanding the biblical source of the expression, attributing it instead to one of the early settlers. Similarly, the architectural style of the freezer plant at Puerto Bories is industrial Post-Victorian (according to Dr. Mac-Lean, owner of the property) rather than “Magellanic” as the author indicated. (The author’s bio claims that he attended UC Berkley, so I might have expected somewhat better scholarship).
There are other misunderstandings as well, often referred to in the trade as “errors.” The author indicates that a boat tour up Last Hope Sound allows a walk to the face of the Balmaceda glacier, when in fact the trail does not lead there but to the Serrano glacier instead (approaching the Balmaceda glacier requires technical rock climbing skills and equipment).
The author also gives the wrong year date for the territorial dispute between Chile and Argentine that nearly erupted into war (stated as 1979, it was actually in 1978 that the two nations sent naval forces against one another, failed to engage due largely to bad weather, and thereafter did not re-initiate active hostilities while papal intervention and arbitration were employed).
The author also states that the power plant at the large freezer plant at Puerto Bories in Chile in the old freezer complex still works. The internal power plant at Bories is not used or even connected and has not been for many years. Such errors don’t materially detract from the basic utility of the book for most short-term travelers.
Some years ago I translated some of the materials for that freezer plant museum at Bories. The material is available for download at the museum website (which could have been cited in this book). For those who may be interested, the diesel powered generators were based first on a Ruston 6 cylinder engine, and in 1970 the plant received a 205 horsepower Caterpillar power plant which could produce up to 125 kW-hr. Both of these engines are on non-functioning static display at the museum, which receives its electrical power nowadays, as it has for years, from the electrical utility, EDELMAG.
Information given about the Bories freezer plant (frigorifico) being expropriated by the Allende administration is also misleading. The 1971 expropriations in Patagonia and elsewhere in Chile were done under an agrarian reform program developed under the Frei administration. The plant was later returned to private ownership. For more on that topic, read “Expropriation in Chile under the Frei agrarian reform” by Joseph R. Thome.
Oh, by the way: that freezer plant area is in the process of getting a new luxury hotel.
There are many improvements that could be added to guidebooks that attempt to describe the tourism aspects of this region. One is that many travelers these days want to know what coffee shops and hotels offer wi-fi. Another is the long-overdue (or understated) mention that the NAVIMAG ferry ships that run between Natales and Pto Montt are in fact cattle ships with sort of afterthought passenger service. The erratic nature of NAVIMAG service (largely due to breakdowns in the ships) should be emphasized.
Getting the distances right is always desirable. Likewise, there is no longer an excuse for serious guide books to not supply GPS coordinates for important and/or particularly hard-to-find locations.
Travel guides written by Americans are notorious for nonsense statements. Here is one: “Distances in Chilean Patagonia are shorter than in Argentina…” Believe it or not, a kilometer in Chile is the same as a kilometer in Argentina !!