Given that Chile only covers about nine degrees of longitude, the reasonable expectation is that it only has one time zone (excluding any far-flung territories and whatnot). I'm sure you're going to surprise me with the true answer :-)

I had to google, I'm surprised that it's 3, I would have assumed that it was just one since it's so narrow.

Everybody forgets Easter Island! (And the other one in the Magallanes and Chilean Antarctica region was added not long ago, 2017 IIRC.)

I assume maybe the other one is to align more closely with Argentina or something? If you look at the time zone map, they just as easily could have had the whole mainland country on one timezone. Bolivia, Paraguay, and parts of Brazil share the same timezone as the northern part of Chili and are just as far east as the southern parts of Chili.

Easter Island makes sense, you don't necessarily expect islands that are far away to share the mainlands timezone. Antarctica is one that probably catches a lot of people since most time zone maps don't even bother to include it and there is no real population there.

> I assume maybe the other one is to align more closely with Argentina or something?

It has to do with differences in latitude. In winter, the southernmost region of Chile[1] was completely dark at around 4 PM with the old time zone. Staying on summer time for the whole year gives its inhabitants an additional hour of sunlight.

[1]: Which includes, but is not equivalent to, Antarctica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magallanes_Region

> Staying on summer time for the whole year gives its inhabitants an additional hour of sunlight.

Now that's not really true is it :) It's robbing Peter to pay Paul.

ah, interesting. I hadn't even thought about the latitude.