San Francisco Lite

  Valparaiso, Chile
Friday, February 9, 2007

A short 1.5 hour bus brought me to Valparaiso, Chile's main commercial port and the center of its Navy.  My guidebook also said that it is "Chile's most captivating city" and it's terrain was "much like San Francisco," but "rough around the edges" with "rollicking waterfront bars."  Well, OK.

I arrived without a place to stay, but found a pretty cool 1.5 star (private bathroom, but off hall, not in room) for $25 with this view from its roof terrace:

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As for being similar to SF, sort of.  It does have a flat downtown/harbor area, is hilly, has some colorful buildings and windy streets, and has an ex-prison with views to drive a lifer to kill himself.  However, it is just one big hill that surrounds the center  in a crescent shape, and, instead of cable cars, it has thirteen funiculars that crank people up and down for about $0.18 one-way.  It does have some great views, particularly at night, but it isn't as preserved as SF, lacks the sophistication, has its working port smack in the center of town, and has a ramshackle Latin third-world feel to all of it (as opposed to San Francisco only having that in the Tenderloin and the Mission).  A simple example is that there must be a millyun tiny galleria stores each the size of a postage stamp and selling only one product.  Plus, I have never seen so many cheap, collective-style minibuses.  (I'm told Chile has the highest bus population per capita in the world.)

The first afternoon, I just wandered around checking out the views, the ascenscions, and the promenades.  I had a wonderful dinner at Pasta e Vino - a restaurant that could have been plucked right out of "7 by 7," found the Irish pub and learned my waitress was an exchange student from San Diego State.  Small world, at times.  By very late that night (Chile is on Spanish time, bars/clubs close at 5:00 a.m.), I was at some place listening to a three-piece band featuring a piper with memories of Peru going through my head.

Yesterday (Thursday), I went to the Naval museum after a lunch of Chilean grilled cheese, i.e. a queso empanada, and a stewy, soupy thing filled with mystery seafood. 

Yum 2

  The museum was surprisingly interesting.  I learned, for example, that Chile has basically had no conflict in the sense that the rest of South and Central America has.  It declared itīs independence in 1818 and kicked the Spanish out, then they kicked Peru and Bolivia's asses, then they kicked Bolivia's ass again in 1879 - taking their only coastal land and landlocking them into economic non-prosperity for life, and remained neutral in WWII.  Obviously, Pinochet executed his coup dīetat of the unpopular communist Salvador Allende (with the CIA's help) in 1973 and engaged in 15 years of torture, brutality and disappearances, but he promised elections and abided when the populace voted him out in 1988.  It's been stable and democratic since.

At night, I enjoyed cheap Chilean cabernet with four Estonians on the hotelīs terrace, followed by a couple of hours with two Irish dudes from New York and the owner of the Irish pub, and that led to ... karaoke.  Now, I havenīt karaoked since I lived in Las Vegas and got drunk enough to sing Sabbath's "War Pigs," solely because I had never seen Sabbath as an option on a karaoke list.  And I haven't seen that since.  Until last night.  "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath."  You gotta be kidding me.  That is sick and wrong.  Just be glad you werenīt there:

"God knows as your dog knows
Bog blast all of you
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Nothing more to do
Living just for dying
Dying just for you"

Today I went to one of Pablo Neruda's three houses.  Nice view.  Collection of ecletic, somewhat kitchy stuff.  I remain "eh" on his poetry, but his bar was cool, but no pictures were allowed of the interior.

I am posting this before I leave because I leave late tonight on an overnight bus to Pucon, the big adventure tourist center in Chile and don't know when I will have a lot of free Internet time again.  I had originally planned to first go to Mendoza, Argentina because it is just over the border from Santiago, but the timetable of a cruise I will be taking requires getting south faster than I had planned.  I still fully intend to get to Mendoza (Argentina's wine capitol) , though.  Stay tuned.