Chile - Valparaiso

22 - 23 July ´08

After travelling 2 hours westwards on an immaculate bus, we arrived at another World Heritage Site. Valparaiso used to be the most important port in the South Pacific and its mix of student and artist atmosphere gave it a special character. The town itself was built on cerros (hills) with a unique system of ascensores (lifts) to ascend and descend the cerros. Our bus dropped us in the centre of town where we hailed down a collectivo (a taxi that crammed in passengers going in the same direction) to take us to Cerro Concepcion. We checked into the charming, family-run Casa Latina before taking a long walk around the narrow, cobble-stoned streets of our neighbourhood. We made our way past some stunning viewpoints to the top of Cerro Bellavista where we visited the house of Pablo Neruda. As probably the most famous Chilean poet of all time, Pablo Neruda was the third Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature - his 3 storey house was filled with gifts and ornaments from around the world and was strategically located to provide some great views of the city. Thereafter, on recommendation of our Chilean friends from the Thai massage course, we headed downtown to JJ Cruz to sample a local speciality dish, Chorillana. Amongst an array of table-top graffiti and strumming folk-singers, we ate our way through a mountainous plate of fries topped with onions and eggs (but traditionally also beef). As night fell, the rain began to pour down harder and harder creating a maze of waterways around the latern-lit alleyways of our cerro - it made for the perfect setting of dark movie scene.

We arose to perfect blue skies the following morning allowing us to wander around the Open Sky Museum of Cerro Bellavista - called so because many of the walls and buildings around the area had been decorated by artists (it was an open-air gallery). We then lunched on the terrace of Cafe Turri where we absorbed our most memorable restaurant backdrop to date - the Andes over the Pacific Ocean. We basked in the sun drinking wine for several hours... we could have sat there for several days. Someone once described the hills of Valaparaiso as being analagous to the ups and downs of life... when you struggle your way to the top, you are given spectacular rewards. That evening we caught a bus back to Santiago in preparation for our next destination... Ecuador.