Chile Forum

I live summers in Chile and Vancouver Canada. Food of the same quality is much cheaper in Chile and for quality you just have to look harder and not buy in Jumbo’s Delis. For restaurant food Chile has come giant strides in the last 10 years and places approach Vancouver in quality but not in value, but Vancouver has the greatest variety and value in the world, the top end here rivals NY or London at ¼ the price. Housing again is much cheaper in Chile, but Vancouver is very very expensive. On other things Home Depot wise, we have a high dollar and access to US style quality consumer produces at prices that have been dropping over the last year, Levi’s are $50 here. So if I just wanted a place to live and eat well Chile would win, I couldn’t find any Philips LED screw in type lights in Chile in a 4 month search.

Case 1: I go to a single large grocery in Vancouver and fill (or nearly fill) the entire list in 30 minutes. There is no 45-minute wait at checkout while someone counts out 5-peso coins and casino tokens. There is a very good chance that what I need is actually stocked on the shelves.

Case 2: In order to fill the same or comparable grocery related list in CL we take four hours and six stops, with associated transportation costs. ( I mean, jeeze, why can't they sell aspirin at an Hiper in Chile? why can't they bake enough bread to have some left when I can there? can't they have more than one fruit weighing stand open at a time to deal with those intra-store lines? ) OK, this situation is slowly improving, but we are not there yet. Certainly you can spend many hours and many kilometers screwing around buying this and that from a dozen suppliers for a few pfennig less, but this can mean making a bloody career of filling a weekly list. And naturally I have to wait and buy the ice-cream at the last stop....

That's only because you live in the outback I haven't been to Jumbo for months, I order everything online, takes me about 20 minutes, they deliver while I'm at work and my lovely nana unpacks and stores everything. I get an email to let me know if anything was out of stock that they were not able to substitute, so I can stop elsewhere for it on my way home.

I went to Toronto this year, first time leaving Chile. Looked for a job as a web developer (got it), rented a room and all that on my own.
While the rent is quite expensive there, I could still save a good part of my salary after taking into account the rent money, transport, food, some gadget or clothes every month.
I'll leave all that experience and the cultural shocks as a Chilean for another post (the one that surprised me the most was people making way in the mechanical escalators).

Now that I'm back I see Chile as a bad deal in terms of bang for the buck. I'm from Temuco, I live with my family and study business here in a public university.
In terms of education, I can't believe how some are so off with the reality of the country, like private U's charging $1200 x month to study MD, everyone trying to get in a University, getting so many loans, paying them after they finish their studies effectively eating part of their already bad future salary. If chileans spoke english, which very few do well, it'd open their minds so much. The few friends I have that do, and my girlfriend who speaks perfect english, have a different view on things.

It also annoys me how overpriced is the real estate here, for the quality of living you get here, and how some wealthy people build houses far from the city for over a million bucks, that are right next a very poor town.

Next is food. I remember buying in Canada some cheap shrimp tails, tuna and that 2 bucks natural orange juice at no frills. Those were my favorites... here for two bucks I can get a watts or soprole "nectar" at my local Jumbo. I actually laughed about the tuna comment a few posts before, it's so true. The quality of cheap tuna here is dysmal, kinda like cat tuna, you have to pony up for better brands to get some decent one. And that's paying three times more than what I did in Toronto.
I found restaurants more expensive in Toronto though, even compared to the local overpriced places here.

I also was spoiled by the sales, and those discount places like Winners. Technology though, while cheaper it wasn't by much, and for some Apple products, the price was even cheaper in Chile. Sound weird but prices here have gone down in the latest years, I was so surprised that the iPad was less here than in Canada (retail price, not the crazy $200.000 sale from Falabella held in February). Cellphone plans suck in Canada tho, especially with those 3 year contracts and the already expensive price.

I felt kinda sad when very few of the canadians from that flight back to SCL were visiting Chile, almost all of them were going to Argentina. I don't blame them.

Canada Rocks! That’s the bottom line. But ya, cell phone contacts are somewhat shitty. Depend on the company and if your on a budget or not. They are by far not the worst. I've seen much worse. Plus its always easy to break a contract commitment. The contracts are usually in place to cover the cost of the free phones you receive. Especially the higher end smart phones, blackberry, iphones etc. Although, I have never minded paying my cell phone bill in Canada, because unlike here in Chile, my cell phone in Canada always had a signal. My cell here, well, lets just say I use my calculator on it more than anything else.