Valparaiso

This weekend Felipe, KellyAnne and I went to Valparaiso (Valpo), a freakin' awesome city on the coast. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of Pablo Neruda's homes and absolutely gorgeous. It's truly unlike any other city I've ever been to. It's a city of about 261,000 people, and it's built entirely on hills (cerros, en español) that kind of tumble down into the bay. To me, it looks like what you would have if you built a city that size in Garibaldi.

We took a bus from Santiago (It only cost a little less than 10 bucks round trip) on Friday afternoon when Felipe got out of class, and arrived around 2 or 3. We didn't have any set lodging plans when we left Santiago, but had heard that there are tons and tons of hostels in the city for pretty cheap, so we figured we'd work that all out once we got there. Sure enough, waiting for us as soon as we got off of the bus there were several women with brochures and pictures of their hostels, vying for our business. It was kind of odd, because as soon as they knew that someone was going to go home with our money, they got kind of nasty between each other, and one of the women who was offering lodging for 10 mil per person per night (about 20 bucks--quite expensive for a hostel) told us the other was in an unsafe part of town and blah blah blah...it was kind of a mess, especially since they were arguing with each other and trying to persuade us in angry Español. However, in the end we found one for 4 mil per person per night, and it turned out to be a really nice facility in a really nice part of town. What's more, to get there we had to take an ''ascensor,'' which is a type of vertical lift specific to Valparaiso (there's probably a dozen of them in the city). They were originally built in the 1800's, but are still in use today, for a fee of 100 pesos (which is like 20 cents). They're absolutely awesome, and they creak and groan as you slide up (or down--they work both ways) a rock face to the other end.

The view looking down from the top of the ascensor's tracks....







...and the same ascensor, looking up


We dropped our things off in the room, and then set out wandering through the city a little bit. We found a place to eat lunch downtown, then took a colectivo (it's like a really cheap group taxi to a set drop-off point) to the house of Pablo Neruda.

Unfortunately you're not allowed to take any pictures inside the house, so I don't have much to share of this part, but it was absolutely awesome. He designed the house himself, and I would encourage you to look up ''Pablo Neruda's House Valparaiso'' (make sure and include Valparaiso, because he had three houses) on Google images. I'm sure there will be some pictures there. It was super cool, painted in all sorts of funky colors. It's all completely and totally exactly how it was when he lived there, and the views of the city and the ocean from his home are breath taking.







There are tons of stray dogs in the city...we stumbled upon some adorable puppies. Don't worry Dad, it wasn't foaming at the mouth and even if it had been it didn't bite me... It was actually kind of hard to leave it there, to be honest. I'm sure it's probably going to have a relatively short, malnourished life, and he was really sweet. Lucky for my family here he was a little too big to fit in my purse...









Here, KellyAnne and I are capturing two of the most distinguishing characteristics of the city...the crazy, beautiful paint schemes, and the ubiquitous stray dogs sleeping everywhere, which we are artistically re-representing....

After wandering around there for about an hour, we set off exploring the streets a little bit. Actually, this turned into a common theme for the weekend. Valparaiso is totally decorated by it's citizens in a way I've never seen before. The houses are all odd shapes and sizes, and every one is painted in vibrant, contrasting colors. One home might be vibrant pink with turquoise trim, while the house on it's left is brilliant orange and black and the house on the right is deep blue with yellow stripes. It's amazing, really, and we never got tired of just walking through the streets without a direction in mind looking at the views of the surrounding hills and all of the homes. Additionally, there are vibrant, beautiful murals EVERYWHERE; in fact there's a part of town called the ''Museo de Cielo Abierto'' or ''Open Air Museum'' which is just a collection of really awesome murals painted by famous (and some completely unknown) artists.




One of Felipe's friends from high school, Peter, has a sister who lives in Valparaiso, and he arrived in town for the weekend that evening as well. We spent that night hanging out with him, (once again) wandering the streets just to see the sights.

The next day we visited La Plaza Victoria, which is most famous because on one side it is bordered by an ancient cathedral and in the middle a giant fountain and statues (which are pretty common fixtures in the Plazas here in general) were looted from Peru during a war in the 1800's and brought here to Chile. That's a lot more funny to think about as you're standing in front of a giant fountain, complete with flowers planted inside of it and probably 30 feet tall--it's definately gorgeous, but it would have never occured to me to take it home! We also visited the Museo de Cielo Abierto this day, and afterwards we went down towards the waterfront and explored around for a while. We ended up taking the metro to a part of town with sea food, because we wanted to try some Chilean seafood dishes, and ate at a very nice (albiet expensive) restaurant there.

This is one of the fountains that was stolen from Peru in the War of the Pacific


Afterwards, we walked...and walked...and walked for several miles back to the hostel, where KellyAnne and I took a nap. When we woke up, we were pretty hungry, and decided that chips and salsa would be heavenly. Too bad they don't eat that here. We ended up buying some bread, because they don't eat tortilla chips, and buying all of the supplies (tomato, cilanto, garlic, onion, olive oil, chili peppers...) to make our own salsa (something neither of us had ever done before.) We went back to the hostel and whipped it up just like we were grew up in Texas, and it turned out quite good. Score for us! That night we hung out in the hostel with Peter again, mostly because we were all too tired to go out anywhere.

Actually, both nights when we were in the hostel we had some pretty interesting company, and it was pretty fun. Also staying there at the same time were a couple in their late 20{s --a Chilean man and a German woman. He's a doctor in the public health system here in Chile, and he met her when they were both studying in Hamburg. She's been in Chile for four years and speaks awesome Spanish, even though when she got here she had very little ability to understand or converse. Right now she's studying international relations in the Universidad de Chile in Valparaiso. I think she works in some sort of diplomatic position or office, but I'm not entirely sure. The naval academy is located in Valaparaiso, as is the national congress, so I wouldn't be surprised if she's somehow affiliated with one of those two places. Anyways, it was really quite interesting to have conversations about all sorts of random things and to have perspectives from so many different angles. For example, I found out last night that the US is one of the few places where we're taught that there are 7 continents. Most other places say there are 6 --North America and South America are known as ''America.'' For this reason, people are really quite annoyed by the fact that we call ourselves ''Americans.'' We actually had quite a lengthy discussion on this subject, in which I was the only person who maintained that it's not a product of us being stuck up or self centered and unaware of the fact that there is more to the Americas than our nation, just a product of our name. I mean, sure, ''United States of America'' might not be exactly accurate for the name of our country, because there are many other ''states'' or sovereign bodies which exist in the Americas and are not united with us, but that's a problem that was created in 1776 when our Constitution was written. It's not our fault that our country has this name , but in any case it would hardly be accurate to refer to myself as a ''United States-ian,'' because then you run into the same problem--countless other countries in the world exist as a body of ''united states.'' Then I would be conceited in thinking that our's is the only set of states which are united, instead of being self-centered in thinking ours is the only conglomeration of states in the Americas. So really, it's not that Americans are ignorant to the fact that there are more to the Americas than our country, the problem is just that our name is relatively un-specific. However, I ran into two problems with this argument. 1) It's a little complicated to explain and 2) I was trying to do it in Spanish. Therefore, I didn't make any headway.



The next day (today) we did more aimless wandering through the streets, seeing sights and taking pictures. We went to the Municipal Museo de Bellas Artes, which was closed because it's Sunday but still has a beautiful building to look at and a lovely boardwalk with a view of the city. There, we ran into an artist who was painting absolutely gorgeous panoramas of the city, and it was pretty cool to talk to him as he made them. I really wanted to buy one, but there were pretty expensive and I'm not exactly sure how I could get it back home. Then, we took an ascensor down to the Plaza Sotomayor, which is where the main Naval building (which is quite old and impressive) is located. The plaza was built over the top of the original Spanish dock, and there's actually a free museum where you can walk down under the plaza and see original pilings and artifacts that still exist in the ground there. There's also a pretty impressive monument and tomb of a Chilean naval hero who was key in helping Chile secure independence, complete with Naval guards in full dress uniform who followed us around to make sure we didn't touch anything. It was actually kind of strange.

We went from there down to the dock, where we watched tour boats and warships and industrial cargo ships and old men in rowboats all milling around. Actually, during all of our time in Valparaiso any time someone figured out we were American they made a point to tell us the American naval ship ''Unitas'' was in town --apparently it was kind of a big deal. We never actually did see the ship, because it left yesterday before we ever made it to that part of the bay, but we did hear a lot about it, and walking by a crowd of people in the street we had the surreal experience of hearing some clearly American men conversing with southern accents. Rumor has it that the city of Valparaiso imported prostitutes from Argentina specially for this event--although to be honest I kind of feel like that's probably not terribly credible. In any case, way to go, USA, for having that affect on a town.

The dock was pretty nice, really, and we stayed there for a while, until it started to rain. It was actually pretty cool all day, and at this time we were all hungry and mostly out of money, so we decided it was a good time to head back to Santiago. We made our way back to the bus station, hopped on a bus, and napped peacefully all the way back into town. All in all, a very fun and interesting weekend!!

This is just a random, salmon pink mansion on a street corner...I took a bunch of pictures hoping that I would be able to use the ''Photo Stitch'' feature to blend them together for a panorama effect, but it turned out to be complicated beyond my patience. Guess you'll just have to imagine what these pictures would look like together...sorry!