A short review of Valparaiso

I've been here two days and a bit and I think I've done most of what I want to (if I don't count taking pictures in places I've been warned off of). This doesn't men that that's all Valpo has to offer--it's just that there's one level of commitment required for a tourist/traveller to "do" a place, and another level to really get to know it.

Here's a short synopsis. Background: topographically, Valparaiso consists of a flat port area and 42 cerros (hills). Because of this geography, there are a lot of winding roads, pasajes (concrete stairways up and down hillsides), and about 15 acensores (kind of like cable cars), not all of which are still in operation. Ok, to the average tourist perhaps 6 or 7 cerros are actually of interest (and the tourist map that you'll find everywhere concentrates on those). My experience was that really only three had any particular sites of interest, though there are good views all over.


Cerro Alegre (where my B&B is) and Cerro Concepcion are adjacent. They have a lot of attractive, well-kept buildings/houses, a lot of pasajes, and are endowed with a profusion of street art, which I'm pretty sure is considered an attraction rather than an eyesore.


The more you look, the more you realize that a considerable number of addresses are businesses: mostly hotels/hostels/B&Bs, restaurants, and art shops of one kind or another. Still, it doesn't feel like a tourist trap, possibly because there aren't a throng of tourists at the moment, but also because many places are fairly subtle about announcing their status: I was often surprised to realize "oh, there's a hotel on this street". Depending on your energy level, you can see most of this area in a day or so.



The other cerro that I recommend is Cerro Panteon, which consists of three cemeteries. Ok, maybe not to everyone's taste, but I'll point out that cemeteries here are not your grandfather's graveyard. There are elaborate above-ground tombs that contain several generations of the same family, and banks of "niches" (nichos in Spanish) that I would describe as "filing cabinets for bodies". Kind of like the morgues you see on cop shows, but in concrete. Rather peaceful places, really. Good for a couple of hours to ponder your sins, or whatever.



Some other things you might take in:

• Pablo Neruda's house (one of his three houses, actually--the poet was not a starving artist). A museum of his life and more or less a shrine restored to the way it was when he was alive, even down to the placement of knick-knacks (not as tacky as it sounds, really).
• Go up and down at least one acensor, more if you're a rail fan

• The area around the bus station has outdoor antiques (ok, junk and books) and flea markets
• If you want a safer look at the places you shouldn't want around, take the #612 bus past your stop. Things get more run down, but there's some good street art.
• If the weather were better I might have done a harbour tour

I have one more day here so I'm not sure what I'll be doing with it.