Valparaiso

Trip Start Sep 11, 2008
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77
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Trip End Jun 05, 2009


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Wednesday, May 6, 2009

We headed to nearby Valparaiso after a few days in Santiago. We stayed the first night in a hostel Casa Aventura which was friendly but bloody expensive for what it was and a bit noisy, right on a main cobbled road. So we moved in the morning to a place up the road which was just a room in a lady`s house, no breakfast but almost half the price and exactly what we needed. The first night Lucy took us down to the port area which is where she used to live for a while when she was in Chile. We found her flat in the morning and a guy pointed out we were about to be robbed by some scallies. The nearby Plaza Echaurren is dodgy and notorious for robberies and pickpocketing. Trust her to live in the dodgiest area.We found a bar where she remembers having the best Chorillana (a mountain of chips topped with chopped steak, sausage, frankfurter, onions and egg) but it was blasting crap music and full of drunken sailors. So we went next door, which was also full of drunken sailors, old men and hundreds of hats hung above the bar. Probably the most dodgy place we have been and we have been to some real scary places. The chorillana was great though. After a beer we couldn`t think of anything else to do after dark in a dangerous port so walked towards the centre and went to see Wolverine which had just come out at the cinema .
Next day we decided to do some more cultural things. We checked out all the graffiti which is everywhere in Valparaiso and is pretty much encouraged as it`s all so good. All the houses, many made of corrugated iron, which spread irregularly up the hillside are painted in all different bright colours which is cool. The city has many funiculars to get up the steep hills, all around 100 years old and still using all the old British parts. We went on a few, the longest only 175m up to the Naval museum above the port. The museum was great and showed the old history with the British and Irish, many of the Admirals and Generals during the war of Independence and the Pacific War with Bolivia and Peru were of British origin as well as later ships. We had a great lunch of seafood at the market, scallops and pink razor clams a la Parmesana and Conger Eel and Reineta, a Chilean speciality. We bumped into an English couple from Liverpool we met in Bolivia, Kamal and Emily, and went to watch the Man U - Arsenal game in a bar. The Mancs won 3-0 which didn`t impress Lucy or Kamal.
Feeling uncultured again we went to Pablo Neruda`s house La Sebastiana on top of a hill overlooking the city. Not being a fan of poetry I had only ever heard Lucy talk of Neruda and had never read one of his poems. I wasn`t about to start now either, but his house was cool, made to look like a ship inside with everything irregular. Loads of interesting stuff and furniture inside and my favourite, the bar. There was nobody else there so we got to wander around freely. On the way back down into town on a cold and rainy day we checked out some of the open air museum of murals on houses and walls but the unofficial stuff all round the city was much better. Valparaiso would be appreciated much more in the sun but we weren`t that lucky, clouds cover the coast of Chile this time of year it seems. A good couple of days though.
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