We visited Sewell in February 2008 encountering some difficulties. There is a homepage (www.sewell.cl) for sewell by CODELCO, the state owned company, which runs several mines, amongs them El Teniente, to which the mining town of Sewell belongs.

This page is of limited use as rather than telling you how to get there, what it costs, etc, it refers to a company called VLT which has the monopoply of taking people there. This is done either by bus on Fro, Sat and Sun for approx 45 USD pP or on all other days as private tour for 144 USD pP.

The committment that CODELCO seems to have with UNESCO is that Sewell as a seperate entity from the mine has to become profitable entity from its tourism engagements within a rather short timeline, otherwise CODELCO might step out. We have been told, that the number of tourist to come to Sewell for the reasons UNESCO declared it a world heritage is already declining after an initial peak, people are more interested in the actual mine rather than in an aboandoned mining town.

Finally one has to understand that you see today only a fragment of the initial mining town, large parts, in particular the part where the american settlements were has been pulled down when the town had to be abandoned due to pollution problems.

The restauration efforts which happened so far are rather disappointing, if they continue at that speed, the whole thing is gone within a few years.

I have to stress however, that despite all the issues above it is absolutely worth seing and we had a very good and comprehensive tour which we much apprecheated.

Visit it as long as it exits.

UNESCO should be much more rigid with states aor companies like CODELCO and ask for a deeper comittments and sould pu the place on the endangered list immediately.