Valpo

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15 November, Wednesday... We arrived in Valparaíso or Valpo for short in the early afternoon and checked into a rather different hostel to the one in Santiago. It wasn't run down per se but it was in a rather old building and smelt a bit. Anyway we weren't planning to stay for long and headed out soon to see this town the guidebook had promised us would be so beautiful. At first glance it seems quite similar to any other city and we were none to impressed but on closer inspection is is actually quite a nice place, the houses are colourful and all of differing styles and spread out haphazardly over the hill which leads down to the port (and a beautiful port it is too).

As the city is built on a hill and is really quite steep in places someone had the iddea of putting in a whole bunch of lifts which are essentially train tracks that carry little wooden carriages up and down the hill all day. They all look like they were put in about 100 years ago and in some cases that is true but that all adds to the fun doesn't it? Up we went on the Ascensor Concepción first off and were welcomed by our first view over the city, quite big it is too, you can see how they've just decided to go uphill as more people moved in. Not wanting to be overcharged by the 20p fee we walked alond the top to the next lift, El Peral for a similar view but in the other direction. After going down we decided to try one more as there didn't seem to be too much else to do in the early evening.

Ascensor Artillería is in the guide as having stunning vistas from the top and surprisingly the guidebook was correct for once. This is the best one we went up and probably should have done it first as we were slightly underwhelmed by the first two views. Not much left to do on a Wednesday we felt so we cooked up a storm then watched some telly but not after Thom worked himself into a rage at the slow pace of the supermarket and the guy who barged in front of us with a full to the brim trolley. No fisticuffs today though.

16 November, Thursday... Deciding that we'd 'done' Valparaíso and the only thing we would have done would be visit Neruda's house we headed towards the bus station to get our onwards tickets. Slight problem was that the first bus out was at 10pm and it was about 1pm when we bought the tickets. OK so we'll spend a bit more time here we thought. We went to look for a food place from the trusty guidebook and after walking past the 'Casino' several times we decided that must be it so ventured inside to find the restaurant that we were after (not sure why they called it a casino outside). The whole place was full of chintz, bells, china, plates, statues, dolls, watches covered the walls in glass cabinets. There was no menu so we opted for the meat, egg and onion on top of chips, chorillana they called it - a chilean delicacy and the plate was covered in about a centimetre of grease under the chips. Fine dining.

Feeling suitably energised by all the fat we'd ingested we headed up the hill (caught an ascensor past a Cristo Redentor statue - no need to go to Rio now) to Neruda's house. Pablo lived in a lovely house which he designed himself. There are lots of winding passages and stairwells and some odd decorations like a horse from a merry-go-round and a stuffed bird. There was a bit of poetry about too including an ode to his house as I have to admit that I only knew his name before visiting. After that we chilled out in the park, met a crazy 'Swedish' guy who spoke Spanish with a strong South American accent and took a photo of us because we were european (I thought that was over in China). After that I had the most interesting pizza I've ever had (burger pizza anyone) and we hopped on the bus to Mendoza in Argentina which certainly wasn't part of the original plan but seems to make more sense than going there later.

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Photos

Neruda's House
Neruda's bed

Valparaíso
View over the city

Valparaíso
I don't know what this building was but I quite liked it