Valparaiso - a truly bohemian experience!

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Valparaiso and Vina del Mar are supposedly the places where the Chileans go when they need to get out of the city. We decided to visit Valparaiso, or "Valpo", as apparently most people go to Vina del Mar. Valpo is a port city set out on an array of hills. It's most striking feature is the graffiti everywhere (well, that and the dog poop). It all goes together to create a laid back feel and you can see how the town got its bohemian reputation.

We decided to take a taxi from the bus station to the hostel. After a bit of a mix up with the taxi driver he pulled to a halt after three minutes in front of the lift that brings you up into the Cerro Bellavista hill. The taxi man had understood that we wanted to go to Bellavista, which is apparently somewhere else. Ah well, its all part of the joy of language difficulties. He had at least brought us to the correct lift. There are six or seven lifts throughout the town that connect the lower part on the coast with the higher part in the hills. We paid out 280 peso to the grumpy woman manning the lift and squashed ourselves into the little box. Soon it was screeching its way to the top, where a grumpy man let us out. Then we got lost in a maze streets going up and down stairs until we found a street name. We were knackered when we eventually found Hostel Caracol at the top of one of the cobbled streets.

We had decided on dormitories again for Valparaiso, as Chile is more expensive at the best of times, but Valpo is part of a greater tourist area and its prices reflect this fact. The hostel had a nice feel to it. A good kitchen and clean toilets - that's all you really hope for in a place. Most of the beds in the dorm were already reserved, and we were left with two seperate top bunk beds. We stored our luggage and set off in search of a supermarket, which was about 15 minutes away down a long set of stairs.

Hauling our shopping back up the hill we had time to begin to appreciate some of the art work that adorns the some of the city's walls. There's a whole lot of amateur rubbish aswell, but if you look closely there are some really clever pieces dotted around the city.

As we set about making dinner we were aware of the raucous Spanish that was flowing from the living area. There were some Chileans in town and they meant to party! Partying hasn't featured often on our South American trip so far as when it has we've had to eat pasta for a week to make up the budget. But we don't begrudge other travellers their night out, and had already mentally prepared ourselves for a bit of noise in the dorm that night when the revellers returned.

Fast-forward to 3am. Mentally prepared or otherwise, I don't think the girl in the bunk under me was prepared to be woken up by a man leaning over her asking her to dance! In fairness to her, she dealt with it swiftly and pointed the drunken imbecil to his bed and wished him a no-nonsense good night. Sadly Julio (as I have dubbed him) wasn't recording anything in his alcohol fuzzed short term memory. After a trip to the kitchen (and we knew he was in the kitchen) he approached Elena once more, in exactly the same manner. After yet another firm rebuke (I would have slapped him silly by now!) he cowered off towards his bed where he began randomly spitting into the air. I was so grateful to be in the top bunk across the room. Although Julio was ignorant to them, I could feel Philippes eyes boring holes into him. It was absolutely disgusting. Eventually he settled and dozed off to sleep. We all rolled over and attempted to drift off again.

Five minutes later I heard an extended snort coming from Julio's bed. Oh no, not snoring. Snoring is the bane of every backpacker´s life. Ear plugs just don't block it all out. And, more fool us, ours were tightly locked away in Philippe's bags in a locker. Getting them out would most likely wake the sleeping beauty and launch us into round three of his absurd behaviour.

It wasn't so bad, and eventually we drifted back off to the land of nod.... for about 20 minutes.... until his mates came home. In fairness, they were stealth incarnate in making their way across to their beds (mostly because they just came in and fell over) but then their snoring started. I kid you not, we had dolby surround snoring at full volume.

One sound stream stood out from the others. The guy by the window (now dubbed Enrique) had the loudest, most unusual, irregular snore that I have ever had the misfortune to hear in my life. So much so that he woke Julio and Ernest (mate #3). Ernest and Julio proceeded to have a conversation giving out about Enrique's snoring - the irony of the conversation was not lost on the rest of us - and went so far as to start lobbing items of clothing at him to try and get him to stop. Eventually, with a pillow covering his head, the sound was muted back to a tolerable level. As we all attempted to catch some small amount of sleep before morning, you guessed it, the dolby surround was back.

It was a night from hell, and as Elena, Philippe and I rose early the next morning we didn't hold back on making our own noise around the dorm. Not normally the vindictive type, I took pleasure in clunking around in my locker, exacerbating any hangover that may be about to kick in. They may have felt like hell, but Philippe and I looked it. We ate quickly and left the hostel to find a nice quiet cafe to get our heads in gear for a day of sight-seeing.

An hour or so later we had enough cafeine floating through our veins to keep us hovering just above the ground. We needed it, because we had stumbled upon yet another community festival. All of the local school kids were out in force, lined up, with marching bands, to parade in front of the local General for the upcoming Independance Day celebration. It was a colourful community setting but sadly also a loud one. We decided to take to the hills!

We made our way to the foot of the Cerro Concepción hill and climbed the steps to the top. As we reached the top we had a lovely view of the harbour. We walked through the streets and admired the colourful murals that were painted everywhere. I was again amazed by the standard of some of the graffiti. It is a beautiful, colourful, peaceful, cool part of the city. Even the street dogs seemed cooler. We ate our packed lunch in the sun and then meandered our way back to the hostel, determined to move out if the boys were staying for another night.

Back at the hostel there was no sign of the three amigos. The entire room had been cleaned and we were offered our choice of beds. We shared the room with a friendly Scotsman that evening and had a great time telling him about the events of the previous night. We got an early night, enjoying the peaceful, snore-free silence. The next noise we heard was our alarm waking us for an early morning trek to the bus station. We had an 8 o clock bus booked to get as far as our next port of call while it is still bright. We are off to La Serena, eight hours north of here.

More from there - and sooner than you might expect!

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