Graffiti Is Not A Crime, Pablo Neruda, Valpo
Trip Start
Sep 29, 2007
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Trip End
Ongoing
Valparaiso,
Chile
Sunday, March 16, 2008
We have spent two very full and fascinating days in Chile's most intriguing, distinctive and charismatic city Valparaiso (Paradise Valley), it's also known as "Valpo" and it's charm immediately took effect on us. We felt like we had been through a time machine. There is a medieval European harbour feel about it. Overlooking the Pacific ocean it's built like an amphitheater of hills with strikingly mad colourful houses tumbling down them seemingly on top of each other, grandiose mansions, a labyrinth of streets, cobblestone alleyways and aesthetically pleasing painted graffiti walls. Artists galore. There are old funicular elevators called acensors, these are a way for local people to be taken to and from their homes high up in the picturesque hillside neighborhoods. Some of the elevators where built as early as 1883 and it was fun to ride up and down them. I think we rode on four or five of them. Some people refer to the city as a cross between San Francisco and Paris, we found it entirely unique and extremely photogenic. Every new street or alleyway taken revealed new art pieces and from up in the hills there were different views and angles giving a new perspective at every turn, a new photograph with every blink of the eye, stimulating and inspiring. The quality of the urban art (graffiti) was outstanding and more like elaborate murals than gangs tagging names.
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There is coloured paint everywhere, walls, fences, fire extinguishers, rubbish bins, everywhere. it adds character to the city. There was a military coup in Chile ( i won't go into it now) when all kinds of displays of the arts were suppressed including poetry, music, books and painting. The arts scene went underground then so it's no wonder now that everyone is expressing themselves loudly.Valpo has an interesting past. Between 1848-1914, the city received large numbers of immigrants, primarily from Europe (Germany, England, Italy). The immigrant communities left an impressive imprint on the city's architecture. Also, a large percentage of Chilean exports go through Valparaíso, the country's main port but in the 19th century, before the Panama canal was built, Valparaíso was also a stop-off point to take on new supplies when ships were traveling between Europe and the west coast of the United States. It was also the hub of Chile's banking sectors. During it's golden age the city was referred to by international sailors as "The Jewel of the Pacific". Valpo is vulnerable to earthquakes. An earthquake in 1906 practically razed the city to the ground and killed 20 000 people. The events of the earthquake and the opening of the Panama Canal combined to deal a staggering blow to Valparaíso, though the city has staged an impressive renaissance in recent years. During the second half of the twentieth century, Valparaíso experienced a great decline, as wealthy families de-gentrified the historic quarter, moving to bustling Santiago or nearby Viña del Mar.
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By the early 1990s, much of the city's unique heritage had been lost and many Chileans had given up on the city. But in the mid 1990s, a grass roots preservation movement blossomed in Valparaíso. I think the younger generations are presently shaping the city into something funky, eclectic and grand mixing in the new whilst showing respect to the old in a most creative and refreshing way. This may have something to do with the fact that there are nine universities in the city.We were circled at the bus station by many women who were each trying to get us to stay at their house for a small charge, unfortunately we had already booked our beds for the night and were looking forward to a quiet place away from the noisy hostels and snoring men in dormitories. The taxi driver who took us to our accommodation at "La Nona B&B" acted as a tour guide pointing out all the city's highlights. A nice welcome.
The first day we tried to orientate but still got ridiculously lost when navigating. The city has an extraordinarily complicated layout and you would need a lifetime there to work it all out without getting lost. Behind and above the downtown business district the hills are a rabbit's warren of steep footpaths, zigzag road and blind alleys. No map could be accurate as a guide and ours was mostly useless, who wants one anyway when the beauty is in wandering aimlessly. Today we were on the hunt for urban art, something i am very fond of photographing in fringe suburbs.
fish market
I like interesting doors and i like proper graffiti done well and respected by other artists. There is an actual "graffiti tourist trail" you can follow through the hills but the best and most interesting murals were the ones we stumbled upon down little alleyways and in hidden pockets. We only saw a small section of the residential areas, you could spend months there exploring more. There are many students with easels and boards drawing and painting in the streets. There are random characters around behaving like what looks to us to be a little shady but we are not sure why or what it is that makes them appear that way. There's also more mullet hair (we call it the Israeli haircut) similar to that one worn by Hotdogs on his late night game show in Australia. The school uniform includes leg warmers and there appears to be only one fashion trend..... the goth, emo, punk combination.This day we were enticed into the Mercado Central for some fresh seafood from the local restaurants on the top floor of the Mercado Central, located in an old faded building in need of repair. There was a rather rough looking tough nut of a fisherman's wife wearing a wife beater singlet who gave us her menu and claimed us as hers first, the easy prey that we are, but we ended up going to another restaurant next door that looked cleaner and spent the whole of lunch terrified that the first lady was going to attack us when we left her neighbours place. The restaurant we ate in was owned by a woman with a smiling friendly face and called "Marisqueria Las Des Palmitas".
vendors
We ordered ceviche (raw fish with coriander cooked in citrus juices), empanada mariscos (crescent shaped seafood pie) and sopa mariscos (sizzling hot seafood soup). While we were eating a couple of fishermen arrived carrying bundles of fresh fish wrapped up in newspaper, presumably fish from the boats in the harbour below. The venue's decor was a little strange with it's bright orange glossy walls, a cuckoo clock and maritime paraphernalia adorning the walls. Throw in a serenading Tango singer with a guitar and you have a defining Valpo moment. We tried our first and maybe last Pisco Sour and a Piscola (Pisco and Coca-Cola) at an old yellow Victorian house now turned into a cafe called "Cafe Brighton" perched high up on the hill overlooking the city below. There was classic music, black and white checkered flooring and an old as the hills waiter. There is much debate over whether or not the origin of the Pisco Sour drink is from Peru or Chile. It contains Pisco (a regional brandy made from grapes), lemon juice, egg whites, simple syrup, and bitters and seemed to have an intense citrus flavour. Reasonably potent too. We were keen to get out amongst it and go out with all the emos to see "Depeche Mode" and "New Order" at a funky nite spot in town but decided the gig would attract too many randoms and went to rack up some much needed sleeping hours in the comfortable hostel.
After a long sleep the first night and simple but great breakfast prepared by Rene we ventured out to one of the three Pablo Neruda's houses, La Sebastiana.
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Pablo Neruda was a fascinating man, a Chilean writer of poetry and a communist politician. Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century. Neruda was accomplished in a variety of styles ranging from erotically charged love poems, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature, a controversial award because of his political activism. The La Sebastiana house is now a museum containing personal items that belonged to Neruda and giving us an insight into his loves, obsessions and passions. The words whimsical, kitsch, wacky and fun come to mind, he really loved to live life. The house was built for Neruda's mistress, additionally he had two other houses, one in Santiago for his mistress and one for himself in Isla Negra, both are now museums and his collections of odd items and artworks will be preserved by the "Pablo Neruda Foundation" that was established after his death. During the military coup Neruda the communist went into exile and his houses were vandalized and looted, his extensive library burned so the items that remain are not in there original places in the house and some parts have been re-built. I really loved the humour of the poet and all his eccentric ways. Neruda wanted a "house in the clouds" that had a view of the entire city of Valparaiso. He also intended to turn the whole of the third floor into a bird cage.
Valpo Urban Art
The Spanish builder made the house like a ship on land with spiral staircases, slim halls, nooks and crannies and round windows so the sea could peep in from all angles. There was a deck extended out from Neruda's study for "possible voyages to the stars". The poet loved coloured glass and often said "water tastes better when drunken from coloured glasses", there is extensive use of stained glass in the house too. Most of the items had been brought from exotic countries. There is a bright red embalmed coro coro bird. There is a comfy looking armchair that Neruda called "the cloud". There is a merry-go-round horse from Paris because Neruda believed that "the child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost the child that lives in him and will miss him", smart man. Neruda had acquired a painting of the Queen wearing a ruffled neck shirt and after awhile thought she was lonely so hung an artwork of a man wearing a ruffled shirt opposite her to keep her company. Classic. Neruda always wrote in green ink and had a magic mirror hanging in his bathroom that distorts your face into a face that looks like you are trying to pull a funny face. There is a sign above his bar that reads "eat, drink and be merry". There are numerous other possessions in the house including an embalmed penguin, musical box, dinner plates with pictures of hot air balloons and blimps, Japanese geisha girl screens, quirky furniture, sketches of costumes from the Russian ballet and statues from Easter Island. He painted the walls in all different colours to represent the houses in the streets surrounding the house.
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There was barber shop, candy striped red and white wallpaper, fantastic choice. The whole house was a pleasure to explore.This day we did another urban art hunt and came across the most obscure puppet show. The puppeteer had made characters from recycled items. There was a fish made from shampoo bottles that swam to quirky music then a scorpion show where a large scorpion made from old wooden bed knobs attacked a small ant puppet made from various plastic bottles and a tennis ball head. The main star of his show was a clown set up in a bedroom scene that was made by setting up props in a vintage suitcase. We caved and bought his DVD, original performance i am sure.
The observation was made that walking this city feels like you have stepped into a time machine and back to around 1978- early 80's. Kids play football and skateboard on the road, ball bearing billy carts are steered down hills, men in the hardware stores whistle and call out to women, everyone has a dog that they have time for, Coca-cola comes in glass bottles with tops, gas and papers are delivered (probably milk too), there are fire hydrants on the corners, all telephone wires and cables are above ground and there are men wandering the streets selling all kinds of produce from baskets. Even the garbos (rubbish collectors) were interesting to watch, they smiled at us as they past clinging to the back of the truck and they waited while people brought their bags of garbage out and even helped the elderly with their loads.
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Top service and a six pack of beer for them at Xmas from the localsi suppose. From on top of the hills we saw the entire port, navy ships and wharf area. The dwellings appear to look like favela shanty towns from a distance with their rusted slanted roofs and tin slapped onto facades but when you are walking amongst it all they are actually gorgeous houses. We acquired a stray dog as we were walking around and would have definitely kept it if we were at home, too cute. The pup kept us company for a couple of hours then disappeared. There is an absurd amount of cat lovers around too. We bought a large load of stationary and fun gear for the sponsored World Vision child, Jeimmy and i bought a stack of star shaped post-it notes to write friendly messages on and stick all over the universe. There are some awesome pastry stores in Valpo and again the lemon meringue pie is a winner.
We visited a new space that not many tourists tack on to their visit to the city. There is a cultural centre called Ex-Carcel that is a public creative space in an old prison high up on the hill. This space has loads of potential. There was graffiti / artwork murals covering all the walls, an experimental circus school, a trapeze and some props around. A giant adult playground. When we visited there was a game of football (soccer) in motion and a trio of performance artists had laid out Turkish style rugs and were practicing their art within the prison walls. You could glance in at the old prison cells and imagine what it would have been like to be in a South American prison cell.
We ate at the classic J Cruz restaurant downtown which has traditional Chilean food and atmosphere.
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The elderly waiter asked us about the Australian band INXS. There was an old military missile hanging above our heads. We ordered the chorillana which is a piled high plate full of beef, onions and eggs buried under a blanket of fries, tasty and one plate fed us both brilliantly. A delicious dish not recommended by dietitians. A singer and accordion player entertained us. Today we placed our packs under guard at the bus station and explored the other end of Valpo city down Argentine Street for the antiques and flea market. Rene had told us it was a "flies" market so we were not sure what to expect but later realised he was just mis-spelling the word flea. There were some interesting finds amongst the junk. Viagra, can ring pull collections and hamsters were sold on rugs along side spray paint, old Barbie dolls, vinyl records and grandma's worst linen. We bought some electro sitar and Indian sitar CDs from a busker. In the kosher antique section i managed to pick up a set of old brass keys that i romantically envision once unlocked some of the doors of the wonderful houses on the hills and some copies of touched up photographs of the indigenous peoples, the Selk'nam. The photographs are wonderful treasures and depict the people wrapped up in thick furs outside their leather clad lodges.
The people in the photographs are the Selk'nam, also known as the Ona. They lived in the Tierra del Fuego islands, in southern Chile and Argentina. They were one of the last groups in South America to be reached by Westerners in the late 19th century.
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The Selk'nam were nomadic people and survived by hunting. They dressed sparingly, a remarkable feat given the cold climate of Patagonia. Selk'nam religion was quite different from other typical "primitive" systems of beliefs. It more or less denied the existence of a supreme being, these beings were only mentioned in one legend as a part of the past, in creation myth. In many of their tales, we can read about shaman-like characters and they were said to have supernatural abilities.The Selk'nam avoided contact with Western colonizers. Westerners killed most of the local animals which were the food source for the Selk'nam and used a great part of the land of Tierra del Fuego to establish large sheep ranches. Selk'nam, who lacked an understanding of sheep herds as private property, hunted sheep, behavior which was perceived as banditry by ranch owners. Ranchers supported armed groups to hunt down and kill the Selk'nam. To receive their bounty, such groups first had to return with the ears of the victims. They were horrifically slaughtered. Missionaries went in to help but the Selk'nam were unable to survive without their traditions and lifestyles, and they dwindled in numbers, particularly falling ill to diseases for which they had no immunity. While Selk'nam numbered in the thousands before Western colonization, by the early twentieth century only several hundreds remained, and the last ethnic Selk'nam died in the mid twentieth century. In May 1974, Ángela Loij, the last ever pure-blood Selk'nam and last indigenous Fuegian, died. There is not much written information collected about the tribes so the photos are important pieces and i am very happy to have acquired some copies.I despise double handling, it's a waste of time. There is an annoying rule in Chile that you have to receive a receipt for all purchases regardless of how small. You go to a public toilet and pay 100 pesos (AU10 cents) and get a receipt that you then exchange for a token and some toilet paper. In stores you often take a numbered waiting ticket like you would in an Australian deli and then select your goods from behind a counter, it's not always on the shelves, line up and pay a cashier who gives you a receipt and sends your goods to be wrapped or bagged (plastic bags are all the rage and everything goes in one) by another person and you line up to collect your new purchase from them. Three step handling sometimes! A waste of staff and time.
We feel rich with our Chilean pesos which come inlarge denominations. 100 000 pesos equals US$100, in actual fact things are better value in Argentina.
Valparaiso, a random, creative and special city and one that would be good to visit in a few years time to see what kind of direction it took.
