Chile

I won’t lie, it is indeed a beautiful country.
But the south, for example, is just as beautiful in Chile as it is acroos the border, in Argentina. The difference is that people from Chile, and by that I mean locals in Santiago, in all the touristic places, and locals both north and south, are just disgusting, terrible, mean, horrific people. You don’t want to meet any of them. I don’t want to cause trouble, I don’t mean to offend anyone, I just wish someone had told me about this before. People there just want to see tourists get screwed. Actually, I think they just want to see anyone being fucked up in some way. Besides that, the food is always, and I mean ALWAYS the same, no matter where you go. There’s nothing you can do about it, menus are identical, and they come in two types: Chinese food and local food. I do love Chinese food back home, but the Chinese food they have in Chile is just.. everything has the same color, the color of boiled meat. It’s all beige and soft and it all tastes the same. Local food means french fries with something they call 1/4 of a chicken, which is chicken wings, basically.
I really thought it was a safe place, but my credit card was cloned and I had to pay about 500USD because someone bought stuff on the internet with it. It didn’t get stolen or anything, people on places like the bus station or the MdDonalds just copy it and use it. I was robbed twice: in downtown Santiago at 3pm on a weekday, and in Valdivia. My camera and mp3 player were stolen in the hotel. My whole luggage was stolen too, all my bags.
Oh, and about the North.. It’s nice indeed, but not worth visiting at all if you’ve already been to Bolivia, because the desert they have there is just tiny compared to the one in Bolivia, and the same thing is true for all the geysers and things. And San Pedro is VERY expensive, even compared to american dollars.
People form huge crowds around you when they realise that you’re trying to decide on a reastaurant or a tour or a taxi ride, not leaving any room for decisions, which really bothered me because I was there with three other people. They act as if they’d simply kill you if you chose some other restaurant, they just stand around you yelling and saying that the other restaurant gave tourists food poisoning ther other day, but they are all screaming in your ear at the same time, so the only thing left to do is not eat anywhere. And they might just be polite, but that’s only untill you pay: once they have your money they simply ignore you. The poor people on the street don’t just ask you for money, they demand it. And they’re not elderly or children either, most of them are strong 40 year old guys. Everything is always dirty, and about half the windows in Santiago are broken. There isn’t much to see there, basically a lot of big Santander Bank buildings..
Oh, and last thing: people there drink soda at room temperature. Don’t even think about wanting to drink a cold beer or Coke.
Again, I’m just trying to help. It could be just me, but I went to over 20 different cities, north and south, and met about 30 or more tourist, and none of them had a different opinion.
good luck to anyone who goes there.