Our Brief Stay in Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, Chile (March 2014)

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20 March 2014 – Thursday – Santiago to Valparaiso, Chile

We arrived early at the Alameda station for our 11:30 am Tur Bus to Valparaiso. There are four buses from Santiago to Valparaiso every hour. We watched them arrive, park and passengers embark, and then depart, from 10:30am onwards. The 11:30 bus, however, failed to appear. The 11:45 bus, however, did appear, and we followed a Chilean woman who was also waiting for the 11:30 bus to the conductor of the newly arrived bus and he arranged for us three as well as two other western women to take this bus. We never did learn what happened to the 11:30 bus! The less than two hour trip was uneventful and the scenery unexciting compared to some of the extraordinary vistas we have previously experienced on our bus journeys, except that after the bus passed through a very long tunnel it emerged into an area of vineyards around the town of Casablanca and it felt for a moment that we were back in the Languedoc of France or the Orvieto countryside! - but only for a moment.

We arrived in Valparaiso in the early afternoon and took a taxi to the hostel, Casa Violeta Limon. Valparaiso is a World Heritage City and promotes itself as the bohemian capital of culture for Chile. While it does have a certain rustic charm, and it does contain some fabulous buildings, and reportedly it has improved in recent years, it remains a filthy kip! Valparaiso is rundown and very dirty. There are mangy stray dogs on every street corner, and there is dog pooh on the sidewalks and rubbish everywhere. There were people begging and sleeping in the streets and on park benches.

Valparaiso is a narrow small port city that sits on a small curved bay, surrounded by a series of hills that one can ascend by funiculars. The residential houses are colourfully painted and many feature some fantastic murals. There is also graffiti – lots of it... everywhere. After checking into the hostel we walked down toward the water and were surprised to find three second hand bookstores very close by. One of the bookstores was stocked completely with English language books. The clerk advised us that the owner was an American pilot who was also a book enthusiast and he sourced his stock in America. The store had an excellent range of Latin American history and politics books as well as sections on the classics of American literature including Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Steinbeck and the Beat Generation writers. At one of the other bookstores I found a very early John D. MacDonald novel, entitled On the Run, a non-Travis McGee novel, and it reminded me how much I always enjoy his novels!

We visited the tourist office and there an exceptionally helpful and friendly young woman gave us an excellent map and marked it up for us with the areas to visit. She also gave us advice about visiting the nearby seaside resort of Vina del Mar, where she lived, via the coastal train as well as other local trips we might consider. She showed us where Neruda’s Valparaiso house was and suggested a route to walk to it which would afford views over the city.

When we had checked into the hostel, we were advised by the receptionist that our bill was 84k Chilean Pesos (from 162 US Dollars) and was payable in cash only. I did not have that much cash on me and she agreed to allow us to pay in the afternoon after having gotten more money from an ATM machine. When we returned later, a different receptionist quoted our bill as 92k CP. We had a discussion about the earlier quotation and were told she was ‘sorry’ but we had to pay 92k and we told her we were only going to pay 84k as quoted by her colleague and she said again she was ‘sorry’ but the colleague had made a mistake and we said we were sorry her colleague had made a mistake but we were still only paying the 84k that we were quoted. This went on for a little while until she called her boss, Peter, who agreed to accept the 84k although he would cancel our online reservation (and thus, presumably, save himself the commission).

Our small apartment opened directly onto the street. Less than 50 meters away was a small public area where a few percussionists were playing for a circle of dancers. They played until about midnight. It was very repetitive music but we didn’t mind it. After they stopped, however, the partying continued with loud talking and laughter and drinking, until about 2am. This we could have done without.



21 March 2014 – Friday – Valparaiso, Chile

We began today by walking up Cerro Concepcion and walking around it and Cerro Alegre. (Cerro means ‘hill’.) There are 45 of these residential hills surrounding Valparaiso. Many of them are accessible by a series of funiculars that are over 100 years old. Conception Hill, as it is known in English, is one of the eight hill districts considered part of the historic quarter which was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.

Conception Hill, as it is known in English, is one of the many hill districts that make up Valparaíso and is one of the eight that are considered part of the historic quarter, which was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. These old streets are paved in rugged cobblestone and many of them have become rundown with dilapidated buildings, broken stairways and empty lots overgrown with flowers and weeds. Lining many of the winding streets are bright murals that lend a more modern feel to the old district and are a reminder of the artistic character of the city. There is also much just plain graffiti. The murals and graffiti, along neglected side streets and dilapidated roads, epitomize the city's character.

We walked along the winding Avienda Alemania which twists along the ridges of Cerro Carcel, La Loma, and San Diego de Dios to Cerro Florida and the Valparaiso home of Pablo Neruda. He was tired of the busy, active life in Santiago and required a quiet home by the sea where he could read and write. He sent a list of requirements to his friends who agreed to help him find a house in Valparaiso. His ‘conditions’ included: ‘It can’t be too high or too low. It should be solitary but not in excess. With neighbours hopefully invisibles. Original, but not uncomfortable. With many wings, but strong. Neither too big or too small. Far from everything but close to transportation. Independent, but close to commerce. It has to be very cheap.’

The house his friends found for him had been designed and built by a Spanish architect, Sebastian Collada, who had died before completing the project in 1949 and the unfinished house full of narrow stairways and hallways was abandoned for many years. The house was too large for him, so he purchased only the upper two floors and the terrace and his friends purchased the bottom two floors. Neruda spent three years finishing the house, painting the walls in bright pastels and filling the small nooks and crannies with unusual objects. He bought old photos of the port and a life-sized portrait of Walt Whitman for the upper level. One of the workers asked him if the portrait was of his father and he replied, ‘Yes, in poetry’.

He named the house after its original architect and wrote a poem to it. It has a fabulous, panoramic view of Valparaiso from the sea-facing windows. It is filled with hundreds of pieces from his collection of unusual objects that he collected on his travels around the world, including music boxes, French bistro table and chairs and a small bar, a wood-carved merry-go-round horse, and his favourite reading chair which he called ‘the Cloud’.

From Le Sebastian on Cerro Florida, we descended back to the city centre for lunch at the Foto Cafe. (We have noticed in Chile many unusual and unexpected commercial pairings, the most unusual of which has to be, so far, a store that sells dog food and fresh eggs.) The Foto Cafe is just that – split between a photography store on one side and a lunch cafe on the other. It is located in a wonderful old building on the main street that was probably originally a department store. It has a wooden floor and pillars and a balcony to the rear. We had two menu del dia’s that started with a shot of pisco sour, starters of a thick vegetable soup and a fried avocado salad. The main course was a Pastel de Choclo which is chunks of pork and small beef bits, cream of corn, half a hard-boiled egg and one olive, covered with a gratin crumble and served in its own piping hot dish. It was excellent and very filling. Joan had a soup starter and a lovely cod in a cream sauce with a vegetable frittata which she enjoyed. We finished with coffee served with small glasses of sparkling water which we thought was a nice touch. Total cost was 14k Chilean Pesos (about 30 USD).

We walked around the downtown and took a trolley bus ride to its terminus and visited the fruit and veg market and we peaked into some very old style pub restaurants with long wooden bars and waiters dressed in black vests and white shirts and bowties. We found the bass of the Club de Jazz Valparaiso at the Piedra Feliz (Happy Stone) but they had no jazz scheduled for the few days we were here.

Again, unfortunately, we were kept awake by the noise of the drinkers on the square nearby.

22 March 2014 – Saturday – Vina del Mar, Chile

This morning we took the metro about 10 kilometres along the coast to the seaside resort town of Vina del Mar. Joan was hoping for an afternoon lying on the beach in the sun, and we were thinking that if it was nice we might spend a few nights here. But autumn has arrived and it was misty and hazy and a little bit too chilly to sun-bathing but ideal weather for wandering and exploring. Vina del Mar claims to be the most popular beach resort in Chile. It boasts a wide, long and white sandy beach. There are many high rise apartment buildings ranged along the seaside, as well as some large hotels and at least one casino. It also has the summer residence of the Chilean president, Castillo Presidencial located on Cerro Castillo.

Known as ‘the Garden City’ there are numerous parks and water fountains throughout the city, including a large flower clock (Reloj de Flores) with its numbers made up of flowering plants, near Caleta Abarca beach. There is a large botanic garden, Parquue del Salitre, on the outskirts of the city that we did not get to visit. Most of the older buildings have been destroyed by multiple earthquakes and much of the architecture, therefore, is modern. The city's casino is art deco and is surrounded by well-tended gardens. The Hotel del Mar was added to the 1930s casino building and resembles the architectural features of the original building.

On our walkabout we stopped into a couple of small hotels and one hostel to inquire about price and availability. We eventually decided that, as the weather was not ideal for sun-bathing, we decided we would instead return to Santiago for another full week.

We had the most unusual pizza ever for lunch at Diego’s. It consisted of a thin cardboard-like cracker crust, like you would buy in a supermarket, with a heap of small sausages covered with layers of cold pastrami. Joan wasn’t very impressed with it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it! (I am a much less discerning food critic and am usually happy just to get something to eat as it is fuel to me, but something more important to Joan.) The restaurant was packed with people sharing these enormous pizzas and taking the leftovers home in boxes. Our young waiter had very good English which he learned from the age of eleven while attending the German school. The wifi at Diego’s wasn’t working and we had no place to stay Sunday night so we ventured into Starbuck’s where we had a woeful coffee just to be able to use their wifi. We reserved an apartment for a week in Santiago and walked back along the very long main shopping street. In addition to street-side stores, all the main shopping streets in Chile also have indoor shopping arcades along them. These arcades are usually devoted to one product or a small range of products. We stumbled on one that contained three music stores – but alas no Chilean jazz! We took the early evening metro back to Valparaiso and returned to find a couple local lads smoking pot while sitting on the steps to our hostel room. And later that evening they were joined by some beer-drinking friends and their partying continued. We confronted them just after 2am, asking them to move their party elsewhere and were subjected to some drunken abuse. At least they got up off the steps and I threw a bucket of soapy water over the steps in the hope that they wouldn’t return. They stood in the street for about another half-an-hour before dispersing.

23 March 2014 – Sunday – Valparaiso to Santiago, Chile

Today we hauled our suitcases and backpacks to the Valparaiso bus station and caught the next Tur Bus back to Santiago. We had had a broken night of sleep from the previous night’s encounter with some local drunks and when we finally got checked into our new 12^th floor apartment we crashed. When we woke all we did was go to the Lieder and stock up on food, Joan made dinner and we crashed again. We were, however, happy to be back to be in Santiago city!

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