Blogs from Valparaíso, Valparaíso Region, Chile, South America - page 46

We spent our time in Cusco relaxing before our trek. Despite being a lovely town with fantastic buildings and history we were a little overwhelmed by all the people hassling us on the street for everything from meals with free pisco to finger puppets. We spent most of our time in the usual Gringo hang-outs, Jack's, Paddy's (the highest Irish owned pub in the world). After two days in Cusco we were ready to leave on our Inca Trek. We weren't doing the classic Inca Trail but what the tour company called a 'community trek'. This involved walking in a nearby valley and staying with the local communities with a percentage of the money we paid going to projects in these communities. The first day of our trek was spent mainly visiting the ruins of Sacsayhuaman ... read more

Our next stops were brief visits to the beautifully unique city of Valparaiso and the neighbouring Vina Del Mar. Valparaiso is a city built on hills and travelling around the city and up and down the hills involves taking a ride on their many funicular elevators! Our local elevator, Cerro Concepcion is the city's oldest, and the odd rickety noises kinda reminded us every so often! The first of our two hostels in Valpo kind of resembled Alfred Hitchcock´s Psycho... think man living alone, picture of mother, hole in wall... hmmm lets just say, watch out when you pre-book accomodation! Anyway, we found a really cool hostel to stay in just around the corner, nice rooms, cool atmosphere, free breakfasts - all good so long as you can handle being chased by stray dogs at night! ... read more

plein de choses se sont passees depuis Vicuña, d abord pour terminer sur ce joli petit village on est alles le soirvoir les etoiles a l observatoire de Mamalluca, c etait bien mais pas top, quand meme pas aussi gros que sur les images de la Nasa. Le lendemain, depart en bus pour 7h de route vers Valparaiso, on y est arrives le soir, on a direct goute aux joies de la vie nocturne de cette ville pleine de significations dans notre imaginaire... en clair on est rentres plutot bourres vers 4h du matin, faudra que je vous raconte ca. Le lendemain, vraie visite de la ville, c est beau et decrepi comme on en revait, ca vaut vraiment le deplacement. Soiree tranquille, comme un dimanche soir. Lundi, on part se balader dans un patelin ... read more

Hello again, Well, we hit the half-way point. We have exactly ten weeks left in the trip, but that´s OK. All trips have to have a half-way point. Knowing we get to spend the same amount of time down here as we already have is a wonderful feeling. Our trip is by no means long by South American travel standards. The average trip to South America for people we have come in contact with is about 3 months. And many of the people are doing this trip as one leg of their year-long around-the-world trip. Today we find ourselves in a city called Valparaíso, about 1.5 hours from Santiago on the Pacific Ocean. Our guide at La Chascona in Santiago described Valparaíso as San Francisco on a LSD trip, but we think it may be closer ... read more

So I can't believe that we are in May already! Things have been going great here and Im sad that we only have 2 months left cause the time is going to fly by! On May 18th to the 23rd I will be at Easter Island, "Isla de Pascua" a.k.a. "El ombligo del mundo"--The belly button of the world!!!! which Im very excited about because its one of the most remote places in the world, 5 1/2 hours off the coast of Chile. We are going to be camping on the beach and renting a car so that we can check out the whole island. Im just excited cause they "lae" (spelling?!?) you when you get off the plane! But Im exstatic about being able to see the Moai statues. http://www.rapanui.cl/eng/index.html http://www.mysteriousplaces.com/Easter_Island/ http://www.southpacific.org/text/finding_easter.html So as for ... read more