Chile - Quick First Reactions

It has been interesting to come here from Ecuador and approach it from the perspective of a developing country.   Chile is clearly no longer a developing country.  I’m not sure when it made the transition, but it certainly looks and feels as developed as say, Western Europe.   In some aspects, it clearly looks better than the US (comparing the highways and subways in Santiago and NYC, for example).  So the first few days were a bit of a shock, as we were hyper-sensitive to everything we’d been missing.

Some examples:  Safe cities (mostly).  Excellent highways with enforced speed limits and very clean and modern highway rest stops.  Potable water everywhere.  Public safety in evidence (e.g., construction sites are clearly fenced off like they would be in the US).  Credit cards accepted everywhere.  Huge supermarkets with thousands and thousands of products (including a kind of Coke that isn’t available in the US).  Nice looking public buses (haven’t been in them yet, but they put my upstate Trailways to shame).  Fast reliable internet.  3G cell service everywhere.  Stable government, stable currency.  Starbucks.

Chile has been compared variously, to Canada, Germany and the Pacific Northwest/California 30 years ago.  There is an element of truth to all of these.  I’m also going to add France (for Santiago) and reiterate the often made comparison between San Francisco and Valparaiso.