Chile: A country that you can not travel to right now

While much of Central America and South America are open for business for citizens from G8 countries (as well as many others) there are some exceptions to the rule. Chile, a wonderful and strange country is not open at all and while I am sure this restriction might not apply to the ultra-wealthy who just get to do whatever they want, the average person like me and probably most of you can not go there at least until July 1st.

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I don't know what to make of the numbers and I don't pay much attention to the US State Department's warnings about "safe" place to travel to the fact of the matter is that only repatriated Chileans or those with residency are being allowed in at all. This is true with air and land border crossings.

To be honest, even if they were allowing people in it would likely be a pretty miserable situation anyway since they have rather extreme regulations in place at the moment anyway.

• Nationwide public mask mandate
• Nationwide curfew from 10pm to 5am (I'll never understand the purpose of these things)
• Restricted or forbidden travel to and from various regions of the country

They also have something called a "sanitary passport" for anyone wishing to even travel outside of certain areas for anything other than work or necessary travel such as going shopping for food or medical care.

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It has been many years since I traveled to Chile, but I have fond memories of it, particularly the friendliness of the people and the gloriously beautiful mountainous regions. There are, as you would expect, some areas that are more accessible and therefore very popular and even crowded when I was visiting there but scenes like the one below are not something you see every now and then and only in specific locations. This is quite common in Chile actually.

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Well, maybe the body of super-clear water below the peaks isn't exactly "common" but all I am trying to say is that this is not a "single place" type of scenery. Much of the entire country has sight-seeing places like the Torres del Paine National Park (pictured above) and there are very few places in the world that I have seen that are like it.

So for now at least, people need to sit tight and wait for Chile to get its own situation sorted out before considering traveling there but one the opportunity arises I highly recommend it. I can't really comment on what the prices are like right at this moment because it was more of a decade ago that I was last there. I can say in a very vague sense that I considered Chile to be a "mid range" location in that it is more expensive than say, Nicaragua, but less expensive than Florida. I suppose that is a less-than-helpful scale there but basically the cost could be considered out of reach for the truly budget-seeking backpacker.

All of this is for naught right now though because regardless of your desire and how much you are willing to pay, you can't go there until at least July 1st, 2021. I think we can fairly guess that this will actually get pushed back even further since several times this year the country had planned to re-open only to continually push it further and further back.

There are plenty of places that you can travel to right now though and if you do just a bit of searching you can easily find them. The benefit to travel right now is that it is likely as inexpensive as it is ever going to be thanks to the extremely diminished demand.