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Published: January 22nd 2010
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We didn't spend much time in the port city of Valparaiso, but the 7 hour journey to get there was very much a scenic one, we passed through the Andes, with some spectacular roads, then through the fertile valley in Chile with plenty of crops and vineyards covering the valley floor and sides of the mountains. We arrived at Vina del Mar on the coast first, with a couple of small little beaches and a resort type of feel. As we hit the coast and headed south we could see the coastline and the city of Valparaiso seemingly connected to Vina del Mar.
We stayed our two nights in Hostal Limon Verde, it was in a great spot just up a hill from the busy town, the building was very cool, historic but yet done up nicely. It must have been over four floors. From the living room on the bottom you could look up through the hollow interior all the way to the roof, it had a spiral staircase and a tunnel crossing above. Valparaiso is a World Heritage Site and it is easy to see why, the style of houses and the makeup of the city has a lot
of character. It was once a rich city until the Panama canal was complete. The town by the water is very flat before it hits the hills, the buildings are very english and grand in the old part of town and as it hits the hills it becomes a strange big conglomerate of colour and unusual building styles, some colonial, some old port buildings and others of corregated iron. This place seemed to have dogs everywhere, now we have seen many dogs along our travels but this town had enough tomake me wonder who was running the town and it also had a few cats around. One of the only places we have encountered them. There are many steep footpaths and the famous 'ascensors' or elevators that you can take up or down so you can save your weary legs. I think there is something like 20 of them or so, we took Espirito Santo built in 1911 with 65m in height. I think the highest in the city is 175m high. It was a nice experience and you can imagine in the old days them being full with people back from the docks.
The town itself has a real
rough edge to it, the streets are full of graffiti, the people are a mix of alternative and business side by side, the pavements are narrow and busy and a few dodgy characters seem to lurk about. To the eye it may look unsafe, but when you are wandering around it doesn't feel unsafe at all. Our full day there we went for a walk around town, the hills of Cerro Alegre and Cerro Conception admiring the architecturly diverse and colourful streets and cafes, it was a maze of streets and footpaths, we saw a few churches and across to Plaza Justica looking at the graffiti works along the way. We went down to the port to try for a boat trip in the Harbour but I think being the only gringos around made us quite a target, we were told by the hostal the price but we were being told all sorts of things and when my Spanish isn't great it doesn't make it easy. We decided to give it a miss. We took the ascensor to Cerro Bellavista to see the murals that make up Museo a Cielo Abierto de Valparaiso (Museum to the open Sky) which was
like an outdoor walking tour of painted murals. I have to say they weren't that great, I saw other graffiti in town that looked much better. Still the buildings and streets are enough to keep the eyes happy. We had a late lunch which was tasty before spending the night in, with some Chilean red. Now on the way to final destination Santiago, we are really glad we stopped here in Valparaiso as we weren't sure if we would, it really is a unique place and like nowhere we have been to previously.
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