“But why Chile?”
October 5, 2011
A friend of mine from college and I just got back from a 9 day trip to Chile. You, like the entire country of Chile might be asking why we went. For us it didn’t seem like a crazy idea. My friend wanted to take a trip, had never been to South America, and felt Argentina was too popular right now so why not go off the path to Chile? And me, well we know I never turn down a trip. Turns out a good cure for the end of summer blues is sneaking off to South America and catching some of their spring. But I think I know why the Chileans were asking that question. We ran into very few tourists from the United States (I’m reluctant to call us ‘Americans’ when we were in the other ‘Americas’) and those we did were mostly students taking courses. The tourists we did run into were mostly from Europe, Canada or Brazil. And the Europeans and Canadians were on month-long tours of the entire South American continent. So the question “Why are you only going to Chile” is because most tourists do the whole continent. Any “Why so short” is because Europeans take their vacations seriously and get at least a month of paid vacation. We met one British couple at the “2nd half” of their 6 month world tour. The girl was on sabbatical from her accounting job! How can you leave a job for 6 months and come back and still have it? I mean seriously, us United Stat-ians need to get our vacation act together because who doesn’t want to do month-long trips overseas?
