Friends stuck in Chile, need advice
January 16, 2011 7:30 AM Subscribe
Most effective way to help friends stuck in souther Chile?
My friend and his wife (and along with 2000 other tourists) are stuck in Puerto Natales, Chile due to local protests over gas price hikes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12200792
What is the most effective thing their friends can do back in the US to help them get out of there? They have suggested calling the embassy, however we are totally unsure what to say. Give us our friends back!? Additionally what can we do to to raise awareness of the situation in the US? How can I figure out what the US government is doing (if anything) to help them out?
My friend and his wife (and along with 2000 other tourists) are stuck in Puerto Natales, Chile due to local protests over gas price hikes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12200792
What is the most effective thing their friends can do back in the US to help them get out of there? They have suggested calling the embassy, however we are totally unsure what to say. Give us our friends back!? Additionally what can we do to to raise awareness of the situation in the US? How can I figure out what the US government is doing (if anything) to help them out?
Best answer: Some friends of mine are also stuck there. They sent me an email this morning saying that they hope to be evacuated today. They've signed up for two different waiting lists for evacuations that the strikers have agreed to allow. One is for a small number of flights that Sky Airlines will be running directly from Puerto Natales to Santiago. Since Sky has only 12 aircraft, it's not clear if that one is going to work out. The other is for an evacuation operated by the Red Cross that will take people either to Punta Arenas, where maybe there will be flights, or to El Calafate in Argentina. The Red Cross is giving priority to children, the elderly, and the ill.
I've been trying to follow what's going on via La Prensa Austral, which seems to say that the promised one-hour window for letting tourists through today wasn't fully respected.
So my guess is that they should definitely contact the embassy, but they should also be networking heavily with other people there to try to figure out what's really happening on the ground. In the hotel where my friends are staying, the guests organized a pot luck dinner yesterday where everybody cooked what they could from the little food they had available. It's frustrating, but there doesn't seem to be much we can do from a distance.
posted by fuzz at 7:59 AM on January 16, 2011
I've been trying to follow what's going on via La Prensa Austral, which seems to say that the promised one-hour window for letting tourists through today wasn't fully respected.
So my guess is that they should definitely contact the embassy, but they should also be networking heavily with other people there to try to figure out what's really happening on the ground. In the hotel where my friends are staying, the guests organized a pot luck dinner yesterday where everybody cooked what they could from the little food they had available. It's frustrating, but there doesn't seem to be much we can do from a distance.
posted by fuzz at 7:59 AM on January 16, 2011
If they're stuck there due to general "protests", strikes, and the like, they should just hunker down where they are for a few days.
The only problem I can see is that they could miss their flight to come home - in which case, if they are flying on an airline that doesn't have a large presence in Chile, a huge help for them would probably be to have friends call and sort out the missed flight/rescheduling issue. Or if they plan to leave Chile through Argentina and fly home from there, getting them tickets would probably be helpful. Also, if they are US citizens traveling on a tight budget, it would probably help if you wired them each the $100 USD or so it costs for an American to get a visa into Argentina.
From the article, it doesn't sound like the end of the world, or like your friends aren't safe where they are. If anything, it sounds like they wouldn't be safe if they tried to fight through the barricades.
Something similar (but shorter in time span) happened to me when I was traveling in India a few years ago. In fact, the leaders of the strike were using my hotel as their HQ! It was a really weird situation, but I was totally safe - my only problems were logistical ones.
posted by Sara C. at 10:40 AM on January 16, 2011
The only problem I can see is that they could miss their flight to come home - in which case, if they are flying on an airline that doesn't have a large presence in Chile, a huge help for them would probably be to have friends call and sort out the missed flight/rescheduling issue. Or if they plan to leave Chile through Argentina and fly home from there, getting them tickets would probably be helpful. Also, if they are US citizens traveling on a tight budget, it would probably help if you wired them each the $100 USD or so it costs for an American to get a visa into Argentina.
From the article, it doesn't sound like the end of the world, or like your friends aren't safe where they are. If anything, it sounds like they wouldn't be safe if they tried to fight through the barricades.
Something similar (but shorter in time span) happened to me when I was traveling in India a few years ago. In fact, the leaders of the strike were using my hotel as their HQ! It was a really weird situation, but I was totally safe - my only problems were logistical ones.
posted by Sara C. at 10:40 AM on January 16, 2011
Best answer: Update: my friends made it out, on the second flight from Puerto Natales. I spoke to them today. They say that if they haven't already done so, your friends should go to Escuela #3 in Puerto Natales and sign up for the waiting list for the flights to Punta Arenas being run by the army and the Red Cross. In Punta Arenas, LAN is running 6 flights a day to Puerto Montt and Santiago. My friends had to spend the night in the airport at Punta Arenas.
The flight schedule out of Puerto Natales is pretty variable -- a few flights went out the day before yesterday, but yesterday only one flight made it out. Since so many people are trying to get out, they may get stuck for few more days. When they sign up for the waiting list, anything they can say to make their departure more urgent will help them get priority. Maybe they can claim that they have a nonrefundable ticket to fly out of Santiago in the next couple of days?
posted by fuzz at 8:52 AM on January 18, 2011
The flight schedule out of Puerto Natales is pretty variable -- a few flights went out the day before yesterday, but yesterday only one flight made it out. Since so many people are trying to get out, they may get stuck for few more days. When they sign up for the waiting list, anything they can say to make their departure more urgent will help them get priority. Maybe they can claim that they have a nonrefundable ticket to fly out of Santiago in the next couple of days?
posted by fuzz at 8:52 AM on January 18, 2011
Another update: the government and the strikers have just reached an agreement a couple of hours ago, and word is that they are dismantling the blocades. Hope your friends have some good luck in getting home!
posted by fuzz at 10:23 AM on January 18, 2011
posted by fuzz at 10:23 AM on January 18, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
Your friends in the US could contact the embassy in Santiago on their behalf, but it's not clear to me why that would be better than the stuck friends contacting the embassy directly.
The web site is here, http://chile.usembassy.gov/service.html, but it appears to be down right now.
posted by dfriedman at 7:36 AM on January 16, 2011