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Fun in Valpo
Entry 16 of 24 | show all | print this entry |
Well, well, well, where do I start? It has been a jam-packed past week and now I must attempt to cram it all into a blog entry, the lack of high-speed internet (unsuprisingly) in the barren Chilean/Bolivian desert has meant that frustration has prevented me from keeping it up to date. It seems as though the internet suffers the same altitude problems that us gringoes have when we are propelled 2km up into the mountains in the space of an hour but before that there was Valparaiso.
Having had a great couple of nights in the capital city of Chile it was time for me and my newly acquired travel-buddies from Cambridge to start making our way north, starting with Valparaiso. Valpo is a strange city, strange because the elevated areas around the main city-which in most other Latin cities would consist of the slum areas-are the homes of the residents of Valpo. The locals tend to ride Funeculars (grounded cablecars) down to the centre, rickety structures that backdate the Boer War! We decided to give it a go ourselves and it was a great way to explore the real city and take in the magnificent panoramics, after the intital scare that we might have been freefalling back down the track.
Due to me being turfed out of my hostel in Santiago I had to make my way separately picking up on the way a solo traveller from Chicago, little did I know the consequences of my soft spot for solo travellers such as myself. It turned out the polite Chicago (due to my inability to remember names I tend to resort to calling them by their hometown/country) was a constantly drunk, trash-talking (appropriate American-ism I think) character who provided endless amusement. He danced away in bars where noone else was dancing, he´d tell jokes to various people until he found someone who actually found it funny (he never did), he´d wake up drunk and gossip about people to the people he was gossiping about and he´d just generally make everyone feel hillariously uncomfortable. This is a regular amusing theme of travelling, the traveller who does your head in but provides endless retrospective amusement. THe particular bit of gossip was he went up to the 4 of us and said "if this hostel is full of douchebags, does this make this place a frat house?", with my limited grasp of American Colloquial English I will attempt to translate "if this hostel has four gap year students who have the initiative to get up and grab the limited servings of all you can eat pizza (a douchebag is an insult by the way and that is why we are douchebags) does this make this place a secret society house of loud-mouth, inconsiderate society members." Chicago-a character we are probably glad to see the back of!
Valparaiso was good fun. On the first night we were promised as much pizza as we can eat and as much beer as we can drink although the first promise was sufficiently fulfilled the four of us were left slightly disappointed when the "unlimited" keg ran dry, Allowing us to reinforce the two classic English stereotypes that are constantly brought up out here: Firstly our taste for beer secondly our love of tea when we nursed our heads the morning after. The hostel was ran by an eccentric guy from Chicago who went out of his way to keep everyone busy, we narrowly missed out on what would have been an amusing night-international night. Everyone who was staying when we left were invited to cook something or create a drink to do with their country. It would have been amusing as at least 90% of the guests were either American or English.
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