City of fun(iculars)

  Valparaiso, Chile
Wednesday, March 19, 2008

We travelled from Puerto Varas to Puerto Montt by bus on Monday morning (start of week 3).  From there, we flew the 600 odd miles to Santiago airport, and were then bussed out to Valparaiso, arriving at the Casa Higueras hotel at lunchtime.  The hotel was a very upmarket boutique operation in a twenties mansion, all white walls and dark stained wood, perched on the side of one of Valparaiso's many hills.  The views of the town and port were superb.





 
We had lunch at the hotel and took a walk down into town to get our bearings.  Before about 1910, Valparaiso was one of the most important ports in the world, being not only the principal export port for Chile, but also as the first port of any size on the pacific side of South America, serving the traffic coming around Cape Horn and making the trip to the west coast USA.  The opening of the Panama canal took away about 90% of their traffic overnight, and the city became a shadow of its former self.  Today it is very scruffy and down at heel, but it has a real character and charm due to its architectural combination of  faded 19th century mansions and corrugated shanties all clinging like limpets to the hillsides, the old funiculars which take a lot of grief out of the hills and its trolleybuses (anorak time).  In some ways, it was like a foreign port out of a 50s Bogart movie
 


We were advised by a number of people that most of Valparaiso was a no-go area.  Having had a stroll around on Monday afternoon, we felt fairly comfortable.  Tuesday morning, we ventured out, first to the Museo del Mar de Lord Thomas Cochrane, followed by the naval museum.  Lord Cochrane is one of the greatest British heroes ever to have been almost totally forgotten by his country.  I've done a separate feature on him, as he might not be everyone's cup of tea.  



 
We had a great seafood lunch down in the Bote Salvavida (lifeboat) restaurant by the quayside, where we were overlooked by a 700 suite floating apartment block called the Star Princess.  Really gross!


 
Then on to La Sebastiana, one of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's homes.  Neruda had an extraordinary life and it finished quite tragically.  Having been part of the Allende government elected in 1970, he subsequently served as Chile's ambassador to France, and was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in '71.  He returned to Chile in '72 having been diagnosed with cancer.  He died of heart failure 12 days after Pinochet's military coup in '73, having learned of his old friend Allende's murder and the ransacking and wrecking of his own house in Santiago.  La Sebastiana's construction and interior epitomises Neruda's childish sense of humour, and this  makes the circumstances surrounding his final days that much harder to bear.
 
We must have walked for miles in Valparaiso, seemingly mostly at an angle of 30 degrees or more up or down, so even as we are piling on the pounds through good eating, we are burning some of them off and getting fit(ter).    
 
We ate on both evenings  in Valparaiso at the Casa Higueras.  Boring as this may be getting, this was another excellent hotel with great views, rooms, service, food and wine and we will be back.  Our lucky streak must turn soon.....
 
Wednesday morning we went back to stay in Santiago for a couple of days, pausing only for a lunch and wine tasting at the Vina Mar vineyard in the Casa Blanca valley.  The production facility was impressive, the Sauvignon Blanc special reserve delicious (and this, their dearest Sauvignon Blanc, costing £3.50 a bottle) and the food - including a perfectly cooked Tuna steak - rich enough to cause us to miss dinner that night.  Actually, we probably missed dinner because we were absolutely slaughtered after the wine tasting.  More anon..............