Valparaiso, Vina del Mar, Quintero

  Valparaiso, Chile
Thursday, December 11, 2008

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This morning, we took a bus to Valparaiso. Arriving there, we jumped on a tour. Valparaiso is on hill, next to the ocean. you can use lifts to go to the top of the city. The houses are very colourful, although quite run down. We were a bit disappointed after all the nice things we heard about the town. It looked a bit like favelas sometimes. We also visited Vina del Mar, the bay next to Valparaiso, where people living in Santiago like to come for the week end. There are big buildings, la playa...kind of like the Canaries islands. The guide was good but there was two annoying Brazilians in the tour with us , who kept asking useless questions. For example, we went to a park that had loads of trees from different countries and he asked "are there any baobabs?". Sean and I kept on looking at each other, raising our eyes to the sky and not trying to laugh.

clock offered by swiss football team

 

Valpo city lift

In the evening, we caught a bus to Quintero, only an hour away from Valpo (that is how you say it if you are cool). It took at least 1.5 hours, stopping at every curb so when we arrived it was dark. Nobody knew our hostel and we only knew it was on the beach. They all seemed confused. Finally, we found it. It was lovely, just in the middle of the dunes, very remote and very quite. Angie, who works there, made us feel really welcome. We had a bond fire in the evening with everyone in the hostel and made "pan loco". She made bread dough and we cooked it around sticks. Some of the neighbours came around to join us. They brought their mp3 players, too. (ils avaient le Saian Supa Crew!!). We had a great laugh because of Micheal Jackson´s Billy Jean lyrics. One sentence sounds like Spanish (si quieres una manzana...if you want an apple, instead of the kid is not my son) We had loads of Chilean wine and some Piscola to drink. Great night.

Valparaiso coloured houses

 

Surf dude

The following day (12/12...bon anniv Papa), we took it really easy. We read in the sun, walked on the beach (loads of minicrabs) and later Sean went surfing. He seems to be pretty good at it. They all wore wetsuits because the ocean is really cold. The owner of the hostel came back that day and he was a bit of pain, giving out about pretty much everything, so that pissed everybody off. We had another good night around the fire (my hair still stink of smoke two days after, though) with some new people.