Valparaíso, Chile

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The bus from Santiago only took 2 hours to arrive to the city of Valparaíso. Along the way, we passed a number of coastal wineries, reminding me of some of the CA southern coast wineries near Santa Barbara. Valparaíso was a sight to see. A city built on hills, destroyed and rebuilt after earthquakes and tsunamis. Similar to Pucon, we passed tsunami escape route signs. Chile, land of natural disasters! We took a short local bus ride then walked up a steep hill to our hostel. A beautiful remodeled Victorian house, our private room had 15 foot vaulted ceilings, crown moulding throughout, and lots of natural light. Once we put our stuff down, the receptionist (who reminded me a lot of my Spanish friend Pascual, with his laid back attitude, goofy demeanor, and love of climbing), explained the city to us, showing us interesting walking routes and parts of the city to avoid. With map in hand, we headed out on a short exploration of the city. We headed to the Naval Museum, but not to tour it. Cerro Artillería is the classic corner mirador over the city. Along the way, we got a taste of the city's artsy and architectural flavor. Graffiti everywhere, beautiful brightly colored colonial buildings, and corragated steel covering entire fascades of buildings. This combo gave the city an elegantly raw character. Chloe and I immediately loved it. From Cerro Artillería, one could see how the city expanded like a shell, where the large harbor, navy docks, and waterfront spread up the ridges of hills, peppered with buildings. From the mirador we walked back down the hilll and headed to the supermarket. Upon entering the hostel with the groceries, we were greeted by the nose crinkeling smell of red onion body odor. We isolated the gross smell eminating from one of the German youth, in which there was a group of 8. We rushed everything to our room in order to take another clean breath. We had to wait until the group had gone to bed upstairs before we could start cooking in the stench and risk tainting our food. Our extreme reaction was justified as we talked with a group of Uruguayan girls while we ate our late dinner. They claimed it was his scent, and a shower or washing his clothes wouldn't help. If that was the case, that would severely suck for him, but in any case, during his stay everyone in the hostel would suffer in his presence. The cleaning lady that lived at the hostel came down as we were finishing dinner with an aerosol can of Febreeze, spraying her entire path. We all laughed and she went on a rant about the group of Germans and how she had never smelled anything this terrible. She trumped our reaction by far but we still appreciated the Febreeze. We turned in after cleaning up the dishes, happy with our fresh air room.

The next morning we exited our room for breakfast only to find the German group occupying the whole table along with the familiar stench so we turned around and waited in our room until they cleared out. After breakfast, we got our stuff together for a day on the beach. We had researched the local beaches and although there were a couple only a few minutes away, we read that the best one possibly in all of Chile was an hour north of Valpo, in theory. We found the local collectivo and started our journey. We seemed to stop every 5 minutes or less, picking up and dropping people off. The process dragged on for 2 1/2 hours, during whihc Chloe had ticked a nerve, since all she had wanted to do for the last month was lay on the beach and jump in the ocean, and now it seemed as if we would never make it. We eventually reached the end of the line in Horcon and set out to find the beach. The town was pretty quaint and cute but upon finding the ocean, the beach was nonexistent. We walked the coast in search of a sandy stretch that never came. Maybe this awesome beach we were looking for was accessible by private transport only, because we never found it. After walking through a wretched stretch of rotting kelp, we settled on a small patch of sand with a rocky shoreline unsuitable for swimming. After warming up in the sun and taking notice of the strikingly similar Californian central coast vegetation, Chloe decided it was time to swim, regardless of the prohibited swimming signs next to us. Although cold, she relished it, and came back rejuvenated with a smile on her face. As she walked back, I noticed an old man with binoculars on one of the condo terraces overlooking the coast following Chloe with his eyes. Creepy, gross and classic, nice...Once she dried in the sun we got our stuff together and headed back along the coast to the town. On the ride back, I noticed we passed quite a few hourly love motels, I guess popular in this area. It ¨only¨ took us 2 hours to arrive back in Valpo, and we were happy to be back. We had made reservations at a highly reputed Italian fushion restaurant called Pasta y Vino in honor of my Dad´s birthday the day before. He had told me on the phone when I called him that they were going to eat well that night and wanted us to join in spirit as well, so they offered to cover the cost of a dinner out. We put our finest backpacking clothes on and made it to our reservation at 9pm. Pasta y Vino had a modern look and a limited space; chic and popular, reservations were a must. Our waiter was extremely helpful, answering our questions about almost every dish on the selective menu with patience and a genuine smile. To start, we ordered a puff pastry wrapped stuffed red bell pepper with goat cheese and shrimp in a blanc sauce. Amazing. For entrees I ordered the housemade zucchini ravioli accompanied with shrimp in a light goat cheese cream sauce and Chloe had a plate of ginger lime clams. Both were very rich and a bit heavy but succulent and delicious. Surprisingly enough, the best part of our meal was the wine. I had been trying to pick a syrah from their list without either of us recognizing any labels. When I asked our waiter, he brought over someone more knowledgeable who recommended the Amayna, when happened to be the most expensive one. I thought this was cliche but he explained that this vintage only produced a small number of cases, no store carried it, and this restuarant was the only one in Valpo that had access to it. It was beyond recommended. You can say I fell for it but we fell into bliss upon tasting it. By far the best wine I´ve ever tried and the best syrah either of us will probably ever have. We savored every sip, so much that we didn´t finish the bottle and took it back with us to the hostel. We thought to ourselves later that maybe we should have tried buying a few bottles and shipped them back to the states! In any case, Chloe and I had a wonderful dinner and experience, thank you again padres!

The next day we took up the Pascual-receptionist´s idea of walking a circuit through the winding streets in the hills of Valpo. I decided to wear my Boca Junior jersey that day but was soon reminded that Boca seems to draw hostility from the various controversies and rivalries they have throughout South America. I didn´t walk a kilometer before someone snarled some words at me out a car window. As we were going to walk around various neighborhoods that we didn´t know I decided to play it safe and went back to the hostel and quickly changed into something more neutral. Along the route, we passed various streets lined with amazing graffiti. A fog had developed along the coast, blocking our view of the sea from the various miradores. One interesting scene we passed was an older man rolling a cart along the street, calling out ¨Empanadas!¨ as if they were ice cream. As we got further along, we reached Pablo Neruda´s house, which had interesting contemporary architecture, especially considering it was built in 1961. We didn´t tour the museum inside, but did check out the numerous local art galleries along the way as we headed down the hill. The Museo del Cielo Abierto (open sky) was cool, as it wasn´t really a museum but rather art painted into the natural city setting. Back in the city center, we ate at a cheap Cuban sandwich spot and checked out a few open artisanal markets before making our way back to the hostel where we spent the rest of the evening.

The following day was pretty uneventful as it was a raining lightly, but we still walked around a bit and checked out some art galleries. We had an early night after making dinner as we had to catch the metro the next day to the bus terminal at 6am. We had a great time in the funky city of hills but were ready to move on the the infamous Argentine wine city, Mendoza!

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Photos

Totally by code
This should withstand the numerous earthquakes in the area right?!