Blogs from Valparaíso Region, Chile, South America - page 10

Valparaiso, or Valpo as locals call it, is just 120km away from Santiago, but the atmosphere between the two cities couldn’t be much more different. While Santiago is a busy big city, Valparaiso, even though not small either with its 400.000 inhabitants and a busy port, seems more like a tranquil harbor town. Most that is interesting about Valparaiso is set on several hills around the town center: they are filled with colorful houses, cafés and artisan shops. It’s obvious that Valparaiso is quite a creative and artistic place: you just have to look at the amount of arty shops, skillful graffiti, and things like concrete stairs painted in bright colors you can find all over the place (who said stairs always have to be grey anyway…). The houses were often much like in Iceland or ... read more

Geo: -33.0206, -71.5548... read more

After more than a week in the capital, I headed to the coast and the colourful harbour city of Valparaiso, enclave of artists, poets , students and migrants from everywhere imaginable. Originally inhabited by local Chango people who were mainly fishermen, Spanish exploration in the mid-16th Century led to it developing into the main harbour for the Chilean Navy and also opened it to international trade beyond Spain and its other colonies. As time progressed, it became a required stopover between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean crossings and played an important role supporting and supplying of the California Gold Rush during the mid 19th century. These days it is considered as possibly the largest seaport in Chile and the surrounding district is one of the most populous areas in Chile. In 2003, UNESCO declared Valparaiso a ... read more

As strange as the title is to type, it is true. It’s crazy to me. I am down to my last two weeks. Besides being strange because it is the end, it is also weird because many of my friends who were here abroad with me have already left to go back to the US! I tried to convince them that it wasn’t allowed to go back without me, but, alas, they didn’t listenJ Though it was sad knowing we would all be parting ways, we made sure to take full advantage of our time by doing several things as a group. One night last week, we all went to a Mexican restaurant together for dinner. It started out just being an idea of a couple people but then more and more people decided to join, ... read more

As I think I mentioned toward the end of my last blog, Katie was here for part of last week and into this week! In total, she spent 8 days here in Chile with me, and I had some awesome opportunities to show her around and show her what my life here was like. For a lot of reasons, it was a wonderful trip! It started on Wednesday morning when I met her at the airport. As I was waiting I met a man also waiting for someone to arrive. We chatted for a bit and it turned out he had a really interesting story to tell. Though Chilean, he had spent over half his life living in the US, and just recently moved back to Chile. He was there waiting for his sister who, as ... read more