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.

Took the first bus to the coast

After failing to arrange a lunch with a friend-of-a-friend in Santiago, I took the bus to my next stop, Valparaiso, about a 1.5 hour drive, cost $7.

The areas around bus stations in Latin America are not known for being upscale, we'll say, and port areas everywhere have the same rep, and this was a bus station at a port. It was near a large informal market, which seemed to extend a couple of blocks uphill. I wouldn't say it was scary, it was just not the kind of place where you want to be in for a long time carrying all your earthly goods, and with a sign around your neck saying "I'm rich" (and we foreigners all are, by comparison) and "oh, yeah, I can't run very fast because I'm carrying a house on my back").

I think the first person I was going to turn to to ask directions might have been a prostitute--the bright pink lipstick and the kissy-face look she gave me kind of pointed me in that direction. The next person I approached was a bus driver--much the smarter choice.

So I found my bus, I found my stop (with the help of a friendly policeman), and found my hotel. When I got to the address I'd written down, there was just an ordinary door with no sign outside saying it was a hotel of any kind. But I rang the bell anyway and when the owner opened the door I commented on the lack of signage he said "I don't need any, this is my home." Perhaps it was me being slow on the uptake, since I hadn't realized that the word "B&B" in the name meant that I would be staying in a private home. After all, you can call your business anything you like, can't you?


I'd have to say that the couple who run this place are the most helpful hoteliers I've run across. Before we even talked about anything like payment or keys I got sat down and was given a map, and then told in great detail where all the sights were (and which places not to go to avoid being mugged--I think he might be a bit overprotective of his guests, since my guidebooks are not so alarmist, then again, they rarely are!) Anyway, I'll exercise all due judgment.

Since it was mid afternoon by the time I got there and I hadn't eaten, I first found a restaurant and then walked around the neighbourhood a bit. A couple of observations: about every third building seems to be one of: a hotel, a restaurant, or an art shop of some kind. And those are the buildings that actually have signs! Who knows what lurks? The other thing is, there's even more "street art" than in Santiago. I wouldn't have thought that possible!


Update: I'd like to give a shout-out to my "home" here in Valparaiso, B&B La Nona. The owners, Rene and Carolina, are a fount of information not just about the city but also about other parts of Chile and are very generous with their time. They speak English and for those such as myself, slow Spanish :) The rooms are excellent (the shower is a bit "emotional"), there is use of wifi, their home computer, and the living area. Lower than posted rates may be available outside peak season.

Santiago Winery Tour

I'm not that much into wine, to tell the truth (I know this is not objectively true, ok, but it pretty much all tastes the same to me...so I have no palate, and/or drink plonk). But when in Chile, do as the Chileans do...or rather, do as the tourists in Chile do. So I went on a winery tour. There used to be real vineyards in Santiago--or in what is now Santiago, there used to be vineyards. The city expanded, the grapes moved out. But some winery headquarters seem to be still here. Hence I ended up at Viña Cousiño Macul.

Four of us were taken on the tour by the sommelier, a guy named Martin. What we got was a brief history of winemaking in Chile (the Spanish started it all in the mid 1500s using crap grapes), the history of the company, a look at some equipment that wasn't being used to make wine, and a couple of tastings. They still do make two vintages on site, but the rows of huge barrels we saw were disappointingly just for show, and the steel barrels that actually are in use were empty since it's not the right time of the year to be fermenting wine (that season switcheroo thing).

We got to taste one white and one red wine. Despite my limited palate, the white was a bit of a revelation. I usually find white wine kind of harsh, but that evidently goes to show that I'm drinking the wrong fizzle. The one I tried this morning had none of that--it was quite smooth. So if your local bootlegger carries Cousiño Macul Antiguas Reservas Chardonnay 2009, do lay in a few bottles. It's not expensive stuff, at least not in Chile, where it goes for about $8 a bottle.

First hike of the trip

My Lonely Planet guide book said there was a decent two-hour (each way) hike near Baños Morales, a village in Cajon del Maipo, a kind of river gorge east of Santiago. It also said there were buses that go there, but the fellow at the travel agency in my hotel said they only go on weekends. Today is Thursday.

So I decided to see if I could get a bus anyway, just for the ride, and in case he was wrong or there was some kind of local transportation available. Anyway, he was right, only weekend and holiday buses, and then only at 8am returning at 5pm. The available bus goes to San Alfonso, about 30km from where I wanted to be. Maybe there would be some good views of the gorge, etc. So the first hour wound through the outskirts of Santiago. I didn't mind, it's ok seeing what's out there, even if we'll never say to ourselves "we'll always have the outskirts of Santiago". The bus driver was playing Tom Jones on the stereo which was also ok since I hadn't heard him in decades. Just when I was wondering if we were going on circles, we headed off along the gorge. All right I guess.


Just before we got to the San Alfonso, I asked another passenger who was reading a tourist brochure where he was going. He didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular, but he did speak Spanish. Turned out to be a Spaniard named José. So the driver old him that if we walked through this tunnel we'd find a path to hike on. I'm not sure where the tunnel came from but it was evidently disused. It was just long enough, and had a turn in the middle, that there was a spot partway through that was thoroughly dark for a about 30 seconds, maybe more. We mucked through and came out the other end, where there was an informal memorial to someone who had died there. Theoretically spooky, but not really. The only path we found was marked "private" so we didn't take it and walked back through the tunnel. Later we found out that it was ok to hike there, but we didn't bother going back.



We walked a bit farther into San Alfonso and found a taxi driver who would take us to Baños Morales (more on that later). This took half an hour or so. The start of the hike was actually a small park ranger station where we had to register in case we came to grief, I guess. The hike was pretty decent. The first 15 minutes or so were uphill and I was panting--thought my regular exercise at home would have stood me in better stead. Oh well--I'm not in my 30s any more. I hope this is just breaking in my lungs for more rigorous hikes later on. Anyway it leveled off for the rest of the way. The scenery was great, bonito, chulo--a 5000m mountain with a glacier at the base. our actual destination was a small lake but we learned from hikers along the way that the lake was still mostly snow, as was part of the trail, though the weather was reasonably warm, bit of a hill wind that made my inner ears ache. It took us about 1hr 45m to get there, then we vegged for a while, and made our way back in slightly less time. No blisters from my new hiking shoes--bonus!





Time and the narrowness of the margin prevent me from writing about the taxi driver right now. More later.

Santiago signs and art

Grafitti is ubiquitous in Santiago. This is especially true in a couple of barrios (neighbourhoods): Barrio Brasil (where my hotel happens to be) and Barrio Bellavista. I'm not sure whether the authorities tolerate it or just don't have the resources to clean it up. In the case of Bellavista, possibly the former. There are signs around there proclaiming it as Chile's bohemian and cultural neighbourhood and its grafitti has been written up in at least one guide book. Question: if a place is officially proclaimed as bohemian, does it cease to be bohemian?

Some grafitti is the usual "tagging" you'll find in any city--not too interesting. Some is blatantly political:

Other ones are evidently "art", at least in the minds of their creators:


To see more, along with a few commercial and non-commercial signs, have a look at my collection on flickr.

Technology and travel

As I sit here in my hotel in Santiago (not in my room, but in kind of an anteroom behind reception, so that I can get better Wifi) I'm kind of liking this, and kind of wondering, what the hell am I doing in front of a computer rather than at a club or at the very least, tucked up with a book.

Technology sure is convenient, and earlier this evening I made a Skype call to my mom, who likes the fact that I can still call her from South America. And that book I could be reading would be on my Kindle, so that I don't have to weigh down my already back-breaking backpack with long tomes for the road.

It's all good, but something gnaws at me that vacation is not the right time to be thinking about Wifi signal strength or flickr upload times. Vacation used to be when you more or less gave up the mod cons and just lived out of that turtle on your back. And I'm only talking the 1980s--when I kept in contact via postcards and the occasional phone call--not decades ago when travel meant being thoroughly cut off from home. I carried around rolls of film, to be developed with feverish interest when I got home to see how the shots turned out.

I remember the first time I sent an email on holiday: it was from a computer in a Greek restaurant in Mexico in 1997. I thought at the time that it would probably be something we'd all be doing eventually, but I underestimated the convenience with which we'd be able to do it. This time I packed a netbook and a Kindle, and will probably get a prepaid cell phone (family likes to keep in touch). I'll probably be uploading a bunch of photos to flickr in the next few days.

So, has something of the romance of travel been lost? More importantly, is travel no longer a voyage into some kind of different world than the one we know, because we're constantly in touch with what we left behind? Yeah, maybe, but I doubt I'll give any of this up. For one thing, communication and dissemination of information aren't bad things. My friends aren't here with me, but they get to know something about what Chile is like. And I don't get as lonely.

Santiago barbecue

This afternoon I was taken to a barbecue by Oscar, a real-life friend of my virtual friend Kala. At first it was like many parties I has been too where everyone was speaking English yet no-one spoke to me and vice-versa [so the language barrier may have been irrelevant] but after a couple of beers, a couple of glasses of Chilean wine, and a couple of piscos, things got a bit looser. I can understand 'Chilean' ok one-on-one. A couple of observations: compared to a similar group that I might have met in Canada, everyone was single [I was told, "single and cynical'] and almost everyone smoked. It was a friendly group--probably it's me who has to open up. One custom to make everyone friendlier is that when you arrive [or leave] men shake hands and kiss the women, and women kiss everyone.

Some things are cheaper here--a substantial steak, a six-pack [and an onion] came in at the equivalent of about $13 Cdn.