Explore Chile in South America

Description and Basic Information

Chile with its capital Santiago is located in South America (Southern South America, bordering the South Pacific Ocean). It covers some 756,951 square kilometres (slightly smaller than twice the size of Montana) with 16,432,000 citizens. Spanish is the language used in Chile. Peru, Bolivia and Argentina are bordering countries.

Chile narrowly stretches along the southern half of the west coast of South America, between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. Spanish is the official language in the country and is spoken by almost the entire population. When entering Chile (by cruise, vehicle or plane), at customs, travelers will need to fill out a tourist card that allows them to stay for up to 90 days. Travelers will have to present the tourist card to Customs officials when leaving the country. Be aware that hotels waive Chile's 19% room tax when the guest shows this card and pays with U.S. dollars. Chile has a rather good airport infrastructure. The main hub for flights in Chile is the Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport (SCL) in Santiago, from where several airlines serve even the remotest corners of the country. Never exchange money on the streets, specially if a "helper" indicates you to follow them. It's not advisable to exchange currency in the hotel or the airport as the rates are awful. Just be patient. Banco Santander has a monopoly on the ATMs of the airport and will add a surcharge of 2500 CLP for retrieving cash - it's still better than the exchange bureaus. With such an enormous coastline, you can expect fish and seafood almost everywhere. Locals used to eat bundles of raw shellfish, but visitors should be cautious of raw shellfish because of frequent outbreaks of red tides.

Pictures from Santiago (Capital)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Chile

The topography featureslow coastal mountains with fertile central valley and rugged Andes in east. The average density of population is about 21 per km². The climate in can be described as temperate with desert in north, Mediterranean in central region, cool and damp in south. Potential natural disasters are severe earthquakes or active volcanism or tsunamis.

To reach someone in Chile dial +56 prior to a number. There are 3,575,000 installed telephones. And there are 16,450,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 1900 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".cl". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 220V - 50Hz.

The country consists of 15 regions/states which are listed below.

Regions/States of Chile

Tourism Information

Official Tourism Office

Website: Chile Tourism

Providencia 1550
P.O. Box 14082
Santiago
Chile

Phone: +56 2 6967141
Fax: +56 2 6960981

Unesco World Heritage Properties

Churches of Chiloé

The Churches of Chiloé represent a unique example in Latin America of an outstanding form of ecclesiastical wooden architecture. They represent a tradition initiated by the Jesuit...

Historic Quarter of the Seaport City of Valparaíso

The colonial city of Valparaíso presents an excellent example of late 19th-century urban and architectural development in Latin America. In its natural amphitheatre-like setting, the city is...

Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works

Humberstone and Santa Laura works contain over 200 former saltpeter works where workers from Chile, Peru and Bolivia lived in company towns and forged a distinctive communal pampinos culture. That...

Rapa Nui National Park

Rapa Nui, the indigenous name of Easter Island, bears witness to a unique cultural phenomenon. A society of Polynesian origin that settled there c. A.D. 300 established a powerful, imaginative and...

Sewell Mining Town

Situated at 2,000 m in the Andes, 60 km to the east of Rancagua, in an environment marked by extremes of climate, Sewell Mining Town was built by the Braden Copper company in 1905 to house workers...

Demographic Information

Age Distribution in Chile

Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Natural Population Growth

Population, Migration and Growth: The population in Chile is growing at an rate of 0.86% (or by 143,350 citizens). Each year 0 people enter this country (or 0.00 per thousand citizens) - making it an immigration country. This leads to an absolute natural increase rate of the population of 0.86%. Or an total increase of 143,350 citizens.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.