My wife and I will be visiting Santiago 2/17-21/03 before taking a cruise, Valparaiso-Buenos Aires. Would appreciate suggestions for airport-hotel transport(not shuttles which are reportedly unreliable and may take very long with multiple stops), Providencia area hotel, tours (or tour driver). Many postings state internet hotel reservations may not be valid for rate or even rooms. Which Internet reservation service have others found reliable. Thanks.

We're cruising 2-8 to 2-22 out of Santiago too. In Santiago we're staying at the Hotel Carrara and in BA at the Marriott Plaza. $99 in SCL and $104 in EZE, per room. I had to call Hotel Carrara to confirm. Working on tours now. Regards, Dale

We just returned from Santiago and also stayed at the Carrerra, which is a lovely hotel with excellent service. It is downtown, but we liked that. We had great luck taking taxis and the Metro, which is cheap, clean and reliable. If you stay or go downtown, the following sights are well worth seeing:<BR><BR>*The changing of the guard at la Moneda (the presidential office building). This occurs at 10 am every other day in the plaza across from la Moneda (and the Carerra). Ask the concierge at your hotel for the schedule.<BR><BR>*The Museo de Arte Precolumbiano, which is just four blocks from La Moneda. It has a small but stunning collection of precolumbian art and should not be missed. (Just across the street is the beautiful old congressional building.)<BR><BR>* The Cathedral, just a block from the museum, on the Plaza de Armas, is also quite beautiful and impressive. <BR><BR>*Another four blocks further on is Cerro Santa Lucia, a lovely park on a hill with a great view of the city. (We found it clean and very safe feeling.)<BR><BR>Downtown Santiago is very busy and crowded with people, and we were warned of pickpockets. However, we had no problems and two merchants corrected me when I got confused about the currency and tried to overpay them.<BR><BR>For good lapis jewelry and other items, visit Morita Gil. The shop is in a residential area called Pedro de Valdivia (near Provedencia) and has very nice things at good prices. <BR><BR>If you want to buy a very nice leather or suede jacket or coat at reasonable prices, visit the Pedro Daggoret warehouse (there are retail outlets at some of the malls, but the selection is smaller and prices seemed higher). I am sure the concierge at your hotel can direct you there.<BR><BR>As to reliaible internet reservations. We stayed in four different hotels while in Chile and made all of our reservations directly with the hotels via the internet. We had absolutely no problems, and all the rooms were waiting for as as reserved when we arrived.<BR><BR>We took a van from the airport arranged by our hotel. It cost $30 and took us directly there.<BR><BR>As to tours, we did not have time to take any, but I understand that a tour of the nearby wine country is worth doing, as is taking a day and going to the nearby beach city of Vina del mar. Once again, your hotel could probably steer you to a tour operator for these excursions.<BR><BR>We enjoyed Santiago very much and wished we had more time to spend there. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

I just returned from a quick trip to Chile with my family. I had to mention the fantastic time we had at a small resort about an hour east of Santiago in the Andes called &quot;Cascada de las Animas&quot; that is owned and run by a local family. Great people and service, with lots of adventure tours out the front door. We particularly enjoyed the horseback riding tours and hiking available on their huge private nature sanctuary. We rented a beautiful log cabin at a very reasonable rate (booked on the internet directly with the resort). Highly recommended.

Given the way Tomas is going out of his way on different threads on Chile (3 so far) to publicize his great experience at cascada de las animas, I can't do anything else than infer that another extremely negative post I read on them might be true and that Tomas is affiliated with Cascada and just doing damage control in a extremely pathetic way.

<BR><BR>travelocity.com worked for me on a trip to Rio. I'll probably go back there for a hotel when I go to Santiago. There or international hotel chain websites.<BR>