A patchwork of hills

Trip Start Mar 31, 2009
1
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Trip End May 08, 2009


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Where I stayed
Hotel Latitud 33 Sur
(Valparaiso hotels)

Flag of Chile  ,
Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Hello from Valparaiso!  I was excited to come to this city with such a diverse and colorful history, and it has lived up to my expectations.  My hotel is charming--my favorite so far this trip--all modern lines and interesting viewpoints, and it's in an equally charming neighborhood called "Cerro Conception".  If you aren't familiar with Valparaiso, it's a Port City, about an hour from Santiago.   Historically, it was a major stopping point for ships making the journey around South America (before the Panama Canal), and it particularly boomed during periods like the California Gold Rush, which it was sometimes easier to transport goods and people around South America rather than across the US. It was quite cosmopolitan, and each group of immigrants had their own neighborhood--Germans, Italians, Spanish, English.  There's a nice bay for the port, and then the city rises up on what seems like hundreds of steep hills all around.  And I do mean STEEP.   The city uses ascensores (funiculars) to make traveling up and down a bit easier, but the one to my neighborhood only goes part of the way--leaving quite a bit of walking
Overlooking Valparaiso
Overlooking Valparaiso
.  Ascensores work in pairs, counterbalancing each other in a continuous loop--one has to go up when the other goes down.  Once you get to your neighborhood, there's less up and down walking--the neighborhoods lie on little plateaus.   The major streets go up and down, with "paseos" occasionally connecting them.  Streets stop and start randomly--or rather they stop and start because the topography dictates.  You really need to know where you are going, or have a good map.  I ended up with four maps--every time I asked directions, I got a different one. Cerro Concepcion is a very artsy neighborhood with lots of cute shops and cafes--quite touristy.  I almost bought a painting--a modern, abstract sort of thing, but regained my senses.

After my first few hours of walking up and down the streets (and hills), I decided that in order to see this town, I needed a tour.  Unfortunately, no one else in the city felt the same way, and I would have needed to pay for two tickets to get someone to drive me around.  I wasn't willing.  As an alternative, my lovely concierge designed a walking tour for me, with my primary goal being Pablo Neruda's house high in the hills. It was a lovely day and a beautiful walk, and I DID it.  Miles of walking, up and down.  Oregon's mountains have nothing on this town!  Unfortunately, Santiago's pollution continues in Valparaiso, and it's hard to get a good picture of the expanse of the city through the haze
Graffitti
Graffitti
.  So I can't give you a good sense of what I saw. The air feels better here, though--it's not as hard to breathe. 

Pablo Neruda (Nobel Prize winning poet, Senator, and very famous person) has three houses in Chile--one in Valparaiso.  It's not a big house, but is on four levels and each room has a view of the sea.  Photos aren't allowed--but I snuck a couple ;).   He must have had an amazing mind--such interesting use of color and art and furniture. Reading his poetry in the place that he wrote it was a lovely experience.

Next, I visited the "Museo de Ciel Abierta" (Museum of Open Sky), which is a series of murals that wind through a neighborhood. The murals were generally a bit abstract for me, but I did like this one, depicting Valparaiso as a sleeping cat.  I wondered why the artist chose a cat rather than a dog.  There are dogs everywhere here--worse than anywhere I have been.  Those who travel with me know that I am pretty tolerant and make canine friends everywhere I go, but in Chile I reached my limit--dog fights, dog sex, dogs with mange, dog poop on every street.  I was feeling pretty disgusted, but heard from a nice tourist consultant that Valparaiso has recently implemented veterinary care for these dogs and that at this point they have almost all been neutered and immunized.  So this is a problem on its way to a solution.

My next stop was to visit the Fonck Museum in neighboring Vina del Mar to see one of only six Maoi that have been removed from Rapa Nui (Easter Island).  Vina is the beach resort that nestles next to Valparaiso--quiet now that it's autumn and chilly.  I was told that I could take a bus there, and two people (one of them the waiter for my 4 course, $6 lunch) told me I could take "any" bus.  Of course that's not true.  It wasn't even true that I could find ONE bus to Vina.  And besides that, I couldn't make any cash machine in the city give me money. I decided I had suffered enough, and headed home for a nap.  After the nap, I explored the neighborhood galleries and had dinner at Valparaiso's best restaurant ($36, including wine and tip--but no dessert because the four course lunch included flan).    I tucked myself into my down comforter in my asymmetrical hotel room and listened to the occasional sound of traffic on the cobblestone streets. It was a good day.
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