Chile: Part 2 - Valparaiso and San Pedro 26th - 31st March 2011

---

We endured a very broken night’s sleep on the bus from Mendoza back to Chile, which involved a 2.30am border crossing, and the Chileans are pretty strict on what you bring in which meant about half the bus had their bags hand searched after they were scanned! 5am came around and the bus stopped, the lights came on, and everyone got off. We asked ‘Valparaiso?’ to the driver and he replied in Spanish in a positive way so off we got. We’d made a reservation at a hostel a bus or metro ride away, but given the early hour, public transport wasn’t yet up and running. We didn’t fancy a taxi due to expense and our Lonely Planet warning us they can be involved in scams, so we sat for an hour in the deserted bus station. It wasn’t until we ventured out that we realised our map didn’t correspond to the roads we found ourselves on! We’d been dropped off in Vina del Mar, not Valparaiso - thanks bus driver! We found the metro stop and it was most definitely still closed, so we jumped on a micro bus which took us 10km down the road to Valparaiso. We had a steep climb up 64 steeps of a dodgy back alley, complete with a few homeless looking guys, before we made it to the safety of our hostel. We were greeted by a lovely lady who only spoke Spanish, but kindly showed us to an empty 8 bed dorm where we could sleep until a more sociable hour.

We had breakfast in the hostel then set off to explore. The whole place, including the alleyway felt much safer in daylight. A large section of the city has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and with good reason, it’s really stunning in our opinion. Very unique and completely unlike anywhere we have ever been. Narrow and steep alleyways all covered in graffiti and old brightly painted old houses perched on the hill sides, with great views of the harbour, although it is a little rough around the edges when you look at all the tangled electricity wires. We wandered around the residential hills until our camera ran out of battery and then went into the less attractive El Plan area which had some cheap markets which were nice to look around. We wandered to the Plaza Sotomayor, an impressive square with a huge Monumnento a los Heroes de Iquique which pays tribute to the Chileans lost during the War of the Pacific (Valparaiso is Chile’s leading merchant port and they are very strict on you not taking photographs of the naval vessels). Here we had, quite possibly, the best ice cream ever at a place called Grido’s. For just over a pound each, we got a waffle cone, dipped in chocolate and chopped nuts, filled with 2 scoops of gelato ice cream and covered in sauce! Amazing! Our only difficultly came with no quite knowing the names of all the flavours, but that made it even more fun!! We didn’t do a lot for the rest of the day, tired after the bad night’s sleep. We self catered that evening and enjoyed a night in the lounge watching the TV – it felt like we were staying in a Chilean home rather than a hostel.

Day two in Valparaiso didn’t start overly well.... a Chilean girl came to bed in our dorm at 5am and then proceeded to be sick on the floor and do nothing to clear it up until 10am! Gross! We enjoyed another breakfast at the hostel and decided we would spend the day at the beach to make the most of the sunny weather. Our Lonely Planet was quite vague about where to go, but suggested catching a Sol del Pacifico bus to the northern town to either Horcon, Maitencillo or Zapallar if you wanted a decent beach. So off we went. The bus that came first was destined for Horcon so on we jumped.... two hours later; we were starting to question if this was going to be worth it! Thank goodness the Horcon bus had come first as the others were even further away! We finally arrived in hippie Horcon and it was definitely lunch time. Chilean’s love their empanda’s which are basically like a cheese and ham (queso and jambon – we are slowly picking it up!!) fried toasty, so we brought some and enjoyed them on the beach. The sun was out and we had lovely views of the chilly and choppy Pacific. We saw some huge pelicans flying among the sea gulls! They were pretty cool and unexpected!! We spent the afternoon on the beach and then endured another 2 hour bus ride back through dry and industrial lands to Val. We headed to the supermarket to self-cater again, they look good on first glance, but when you try to get the ingredients for a meal, it’s very difficult! They basically sell 100 different types of pasta, and 100 different types of tomato sauce, and not a lot else! So we ended up with a near identical meal to the previous evening, still at least it was cheap.

The next day we had to check out of our hostel, but weren’t leaving Val until 10pm on a night bus. We had to use an online translator to explain to the lady who owned the hostel that we wanted to leave our bags there for the day. She found this most amusing! We set off with a recharged camera battery to the UNESCO parts of town and decided to treat ourselves to another ice cream for lunch. Valparaiso is famous for its ascensors (basically lifts) that are scattered all over the city. We hadn’t yet been on one, and as luck would have it, today was Monday which meant they were all closed, doh! We did have a nice experience with a guy shouting ‘Gringo’ out of his taxi window and sticking his finger up at us (think Dan wearing a ‘New York’ t-shirt didn’t help). This was then followed by a business man warning us that people were watching us and we would be mugged walking around Val even in the daylight! I know he was trying to give us a kind warning to be careful, but he said it in such a way that it left us feeling really vulnerable – particularly when we were also homeless for the day! So we carried on and tried to visit the Museo del Mar Lord Cochrane which housed Chile’s first observatory, but it too was closed, dam Monday’s! Next we wandered to the Victoria Plaza and found Museo a Cielo Abierto – an open air museum of abstract murals. That was pretty cool, but only took a few minutes to walk around. It was only 3pm, we’d seen all Val had to offer, we didn’t have a hostel we could return to, and we didn’t feel particularly safe hanging around the streets anymore, so we decided to cut our losses, and catch another bus over to Vina del Mar where we spent a few hours chilling out reading our books on the beach. We ate dinner in a restaurant called Schawerma run by a Palestinian cook and it was really tasty, and pretty cheap. We bused it back to the hostel, collected our bags and caught another bus to the bus terminal, quite glad to be finally on our way.

It was a long 24 hour coach journey up to San Pedro. The bus was okay, they provide you with a pillow and blanket and some snacks, but they play films constantly and all but one were dubbed in Spanish – very loud and annoying! We couldn’t believe how vast and empty and dry the country is. We’d drive for hours and pass nothing but small villages in the middle of nowhere which we guess are surviving solely on fishing – we questioned who in their right mind would want to live there!

At 11pm the following day we pulled into San Pedro de Atacama’s bus station, bumped into some people we’d met at Mr Hugo’s wine tasting in Mendoza and all got mini bussed to the same hostel! Strange how that happens! We moved into a small dorm with single beds – it felt like such a treat after bunk beds and sleeping on buses, we slept really well that night.

San Pedro sits at 2440m above sea level, so was our first experience of being at altitude. We had breakfast at the hostel, and then walked the 10 minutes into town. We’d put on factor 30 sun cream, but the sun was so hot it still felt like it was burning you! A very dry heat thought, not humid at all. The Plaza de Armas at the centre of the town is a pretty little square surrounded by nice restaurants – lots complete with fire pits for the cold evenings. We knew we didn’t have long in San Pedro, so booked straight onto a tour to the Lunar Valley that left later that afternoon. We returned to the hostel to change into more dessert friendly clothes before going out for lunch. We found ourselves unknowingly in a vegetarian restaurant. Ordering is still guess work, but Laura recognised the word ‘champinon’ so ordered that. As soon as lunch arrived, we realised that the reason she recognised the word champinon is because she had tried to remember it meant mushrooms, so she wouldn’t order something she didn’t like! Opps!!

The afternoon’s tour was more successful. We were driven around in a huge yellow truck and luckily our guide was bilingual and did the whole tour in Spanish and English. Our first stop was to an awesome view point of the Death Valley (Valle de la Muerte – named due to a mix up between a poorly Spanish speaking Dutch man and the locals!) where we could see the snow capped Lincancabur Volcano which marks the border between Chile and Bolivia. Next stop was the Valle de la Luna, again it was stunning and completely different to any landscape we have already experienced. Our guide was very knowledgeable and did a great job of explaining the formation of the things we were looking at. We had to pay an entrance fee to get into the Valle de la Luna park, where we had a 45 minute guided walk through the canyons. We were all silent at one point, and you could actually hear the sound of the salt and rocks expanding due to the heat of the day. We briefly stopped at the Tres Maria’s – a rock formation which is meant to look like the 3 Mary’s from the bible, we didn’t really see it! Then it was on to our final stop, which was a 20 minute uphill climb to a peak from where we could watch the sun set. It was beautiful and the views were spectacular. Once the sun was down, we returned to the van, emptied our shoes of sand and were driven back to the town. We purchased a bottle of Chilean red (it’s not so cheap when you are shopping in the dessert unfortunately!) and enjoyed it along with another empanda for dinner.

We had only one more day in San Pedro before we caught another night bus out of there. We left our bags at the hostel once more, enjoyed another lunch in a pretty dessert garden, and looked around the Iglesia San Pedro - the Catholic Church which has been there since the late 16th century. We also visited the Museo Arquelogico Padre le Paige. The Lonely Planet had told us that ‘fascinating malformed skulls and mummies will glue you to the glass’ but when we arrived we were greeted by a sign saying all human remains had been removed. It was still an interesting exhibition which explained the Atacameno culture and its development. We looked around the Paseo Artesanal which had some lovely souvenirs for sale, but we decided it would be cheaper to shop in Peru. We returned to our hostel, and the nice owner gave us a lift to the bus station so we didn’t have to carry our bags. At 8.25pm we caught an hour long bus to the town of Calama, where we had a 2 hour wait to get our night bus to Arcia, a town near the Peruvian border.


We thoroughly enjoyed our short trip to Chile. It feels great to be around so much culture again, something we missed a bit in Australia and New Zealand. We’d love to return to Southern Chile to see the Lake District and Patagonia – it seems the more we travel, the more places we find we want to visit! Next country: Peru.

---

Comments

[karen]

striking photos
some really stunning and very colourful pictures i liked the ice cream 1 and various art stuff. noticed you've got a travel blog photo award too congratulations

[John Rayner]

Just discovered the site
Well done you two. Mum put me on to the site via skype. Brilliant reading it. Write the book when you get back home and I'll order half a dozen copies.