Valparaiso- the last Chilean pit-stop of our trip

(Well, actually... It's been a month since we arrived in Peru, but we're catching up slowly with the blog)

Located on the coast, west from Santiago, Valparaiso is the main port of the country.

The thing that you will notice while first time seeing the city: the slippery hills and colorful houses on them. The city looks like an amphitheater of hills.

Most houses are painted in bright colors or covered with paintings. Even for the Chilean standards, Valparaiso is full of graffiti, and that of a really high quality.

We spent a week in Valpo, in our program: urban walks, ascensores, beers, lots of stairs and treasure hunt to find the graffitis made by a friend of ours who painted here a few years ago (and we've found quite a lot of them).

Since 2003, Valparaiso is classified World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Previously it was a port with a very bad reputation and very affected by economic crisis and poverty (since the construction of Panama canal). In the late 1990s there were only 2 big companies that kept the city economically alive. One of those enterprises wanted to increase the surface area of their headquarters by building a big ugly glass cube on top of it. The problem was, that the building was situated in the very historical XIX century centre of the city. Obviously, the municipality refused on the spot, but had to change it's mind under the company's pressure. Despite the inhabitants manifestations against the project, it was unfortunately finalized... But every cloud has a silver lining: an association was created, that filed a demand at the UNESCO and now the city center is a protected zone. The irony of the situation is that that glass cube now can't be removed, because it's construction was finished before the city became World Heritage Site.

Nonetheless, thanks to this protection, the city has been able to unlock founds to clean and develop the city center and Valparaiso is now experiencing a real tourist boom.

Our first home was located in the Cerro Bellavista, artistic neighbourhood, where you can find the Open Air Museum (Museo a Cielo Abierto). It is not real museum but few blocks, where in the 60s, an art teacher and his students begun improving the appearance this old working-class district by creating the frescoes on the walls. The graffiti artists didn't stop there- today almost every building is covered at least partly by paintings.

P1160849

P1160852

P1160853

P1160858

P1160848

P1160846

P1160839

P1160840

P1160842

P1160843

P1160844

P1160845

Climbing a little higher up the hills you can see an incredible panorama of the city. But if you have a face of the typical gringo, you have to keep in mind not to climb too high. In the eastern part of the city, between Cerro Cordillera and Santo Domingo, we were advised to go down... Well, actually an old lady started shouting that we should bog off from there. In this situation, we had no other choice than to listen to the wisdom of the elderly... Like in the case of most of the cities built on the hills, the higher you go, the more disadvantaged the neighborhoods are, and at the top you can find the ghettos ... and los gringos with lots of money (because nobody bothers to differentiate the tourists) are an easy prey.

To get from our neighborhood to the city center we used to take one of the many painted stairs, a good spot to smoke spliffs and drink beer for the young people of the area.

The police seem more tolerant on that matter that in other parts of the country: you can drink a beer under the sky without any problems, even though it's prohibited in Chile. But the reputation of the city as an educational and artistic center had to have an impact of the police attitudes.

An alternative to many stairs to get from the centre to the residential areas: ascensores or cable cars.

At the time of the city's economic boom of in the early 1900s, Valpo had more than thirty ascensores, now only 6 of them are active (and few more are in renovation in this moment).

The cable car really worth of a ride is called Artillera and takes you up to a belvedere (paseo 21 de Mayo) with a panoramic view on the city.

We've also decided to make a use of a sunny weather and we've headed to Viña del Mar.

Situated of in the northern part of the Greater Valparaiso metropolitan area, is a seaside resort with a really different atmosphere from the one that we've enjoyed before. A lot of commercial malls, new architecture and not much else to see besides beaches and a museum (Arqueologia e Historia Francisco Fonck). Just before the museum you can find an Easter Island's Moai, one of the two removed from their "natural habitat". We've spent an afternoon while chilling in the middle of the crowd, with itinerant sellers and singers (there's a chance that Quentin will create some music with a reggae singer with an amazing voice).

Valpo itself does not have beaches, the lower part of the city was created artificially- previously the hills went down directly into the sea. At the docks, painted numbers that correspond to the depth of the sea starts at 45m!

Volunteering:

We've started to propose the creation of the websites and the translation into English and French. On December 11th we've started working for a hostel in Valpo in exchange for housing and food. After a day of work Quentin checked the schedule of our flight that we "had to" take on the 13th ... But it turned out that instead of leaving in 2 days, our plane is taking of in few hours! What's more, it was already 23p.m., and we were supposed to be at the Santiago airport before 5a.m., so about 120km from where we were at the moment!

No more buses at this hour, so we've spent almost 2 hours in a taxi (well, it was much more expensive than taking a bus, but we had no much choice since we couldn't cancel or change the date of our flight). And luckily that we arrived at the airport quite quickly, because the LAW airline made us "a little joke": the flight was leaving an hour earlier than it was noted on our tickets... Less to say, that at our arrival to Lima we've reminded more the zombies, than living human beings^^

And well, we did a free website for the hotel since we didn’t even spend a night in it. By the way, you can like our page: https: //www.facebook.com/sitiowebbarato/

#Chile #Valparaiso #Valpo