This trip through Chile has been amazing, and amazingly frustrating at times!!   WiFi is not readily available in places, and in some hostels, while they advertise that you have “free WiFi in all areas”, it does not mean it is reliable WiFi!.

Take, for instance, where I am now.  They advertise free WiFi but what they neglect to tell you is that yes, it is free and available throughout the property, however, being that all the rooms are on the 2nd and 3rd floor, as you get further up, the WiFi is much less reliable.  And, for some odd reason, the WiFi here only seems to work on one electronic device at a time – so I need to turn WiFi off of my phone so I can use my laptop.  I know I know – first world problems right?

But in the age of instant communication, and when you have family wanting to make sure you are okay, it is very frustrating to have unreliable WiFi.

Another interesting thing about Chile – there are very few places you can go and get free WiFi.  In China, it seemed like every restaurant, mall and school had free WiFi.  Everywhere you went, you could connect (sometimes even on the bus!).  The same was true about Prague – I was always able to get on somewhere.  But not in Chile.  Which is good and bad.  It’s good, because you actually see people communicating with each other (shocking right??).  But again, it’s “bad” because for travellers, some times it is very important to have that luxury of WiFi connection.

While I have enjoyed not having WiFi all the time, I would like to have it when I am back in my room relaxing and wanting to search the web!

What do you think – should we have limited WiFi throughout the world so that we can communicate better with each other, or should there be more access to the internet??  I am interested in hearing other opinions!