Valpo Wonderland

Valpo Wonderland

Valparaiso and Santiago are a couple hours apart in the middle of Chile. We wanted to see both and spent about five days in Valpo and a week in Santiago (we hadn't planned on quite that long but the Semana Santa holiday had flights all booked). Interesting how two cities so close to each other could be so different.

Valpo used to be a major port and the wealthiest city in Chile. The grand, ornate buildings are still there but looking pretty rough these days. The city is built over a few very steep hills, and is unique for its furniculars taking passengers up and down. They are over a hundred years old and usually only about half are in service. UNESCO money is helping to increase these numbers and fix up some of the more historic areas. Valpo is the hip and liberal city with lots of artists in residence and left wing statements scrawled on walls including vegan propaganda (Jen, you read this?). My favorite thing about Valpo was the murals. It was already well known for these, but last November, the government invited street artists from all over Chile to go nuts on a run down neighborhood that could use the tourism dollars. The word must still not be out among the tourists because Alex and I seemed to be the only ones exploring this neighborhood. There was so much variety and creativity and it beat the pretension and stuffiness of a gallery any day. I also loved the element of discovery as there was something new around every corner. I shot dozens but could only include a handful of favorites at the bottom of this post. Apologies for the load time.

Santiago immediately feels different. It is modern, wealthy, and businessy. It has an excellent metro system, some nice parks, and lots of pedestrian malls (I always thought the US needed more of those). Apart from a few mediocre museums and historic buildings, there isn't really much for a tourist, but I could see it being a nice city to live in. Like every city, it has a few of its own oddities.

About a hundred years ago, a businessman who recognized the mediocrity of Chilean coffee had the idea of giving his coffee shops another attraction, waitresses in short miniskirts. "Cafe con Piernas" (coffee with legs) was born. Now in most of the Santiago coffee shops you see the waitresses dressed this way, walking on catwalks behind the counter for a better view. Some shops take the idea a step further with the waitresses in bikinis. We even saw some shops with blacked out windows and decided not to find out what goes on in there. If you think this is contradictory to the conservative Catholic mindset you'd expect, you should see the sex toy shops.

My next post will be about Patagonia.

What time is it in Chile?

When arriving in Arica, an unexceptional beach town in the tip top of Chile, it was time for the daylight savings time change. We weren't sure if it applied to Chile so we asked Google. Google told us to move the clocks forward one hour, so we did. IPad confirmed. Four days later, we get to the bus station to go to the next city on our itinerary and were told we missed our bus by a hour. The country seemed to have changed its clocks either that day or a day prior one additional hour. Wikipedia had no explanation. Who knows.

There isnt much in Arica except an impressive museum with 5000yr old mummies. They go into explanations of how mummification changed over the years, from just wrapping them in cloth to full on gutting them and replacing bones with sticks. It was all kind of macabre and fascinating.

Tonight we will be leaving San Pedro de Atacama on a 23hr bus ride to Santiago (wahoo!). SanPedro is a little city in the northern Chilean desert seemingly created just for tourists to explore the surroundings. The streets here have far more tourists than natives and the adobe and cement structures house endless tour operators, handicrafts, and restaurants. Prices are really high because I'm told that they run everything with generators, pump their own water, must use diesel, etc.

The area has lagoons, interesting rock formations, jagged salty terrain kind of like Death Valley, and a field of geysers(that trip picked us up at 4:30am). The tours around the area remind me a little of Colca Canyon near Arequipa, Peru in that the scenery is gorgeous,but you share it with lots of other tourists.

This is also supposed to be one of the best places on the continent for stargazing because its so remote, high up, and dry. We went on a star tour last night. The Milky Way cloud is easy to see with the naked eye and you can actually see some other galaxy clouds that I had never see before. The tour included a lengthy astronomy lesson and use of ten different telescopes. One of them was pointed at the moon and had an attachment that let me take a photo.

Next stop is a Valparaiso, a bohemian (I know, I get sick of hearing that word too), artsy city known for great murals and other street art.

The Trash Song

We have been in Arequipa Peru for the last couple of weeks and we will be heading to Chile in a few days. We chose an extended stay in order to spend a couple of weeks in a Spanish school. I've learned a lot, but can't say I am as far by now as I thought I would be.  Just being in the country is not sufficient,  there is plenty of practice and memorization necessary too. Having a travel partner I can conveniently switch back to English with doesn't help either.

One nice thing about being in city a little longer is that you start to recognize its unique quirks. Homes here don't have outdoor trash cans(common), because of fear of theft and rummaging. The trash truck that drives around daily to pick up your trash recently switched from a notification bell to playing Fur Elise (famous classical tune, you know it). Everyday around the same time, you here this song over and over as the truck makes its rounds.

 This city is also known for its "queso helado" (cheese ice cream).  There are little stands on the street selling this stuff. I think it tastes like French vanilla with a hint of cheesecake. In fact I've never seen a Latin American city that loves its desserts so much. Lots of ice cream, pastry and chocolate shops. And its all very good to, not like the pastry shops in China that have the most delicious looking items that invariably taste like aged photocopies.

The most interesting thing here must be Santa Catalina Monastery. It's this huge complex that dates back to the 1500s which is almost like a small city with courtyards, a market, cemetery, etc.  It's fun to wander around for an afternoon. Around100 nuns or so still live in one wing.

The area around here is really beautiful. This is one of those times when I feel that photography as a medium is pretty lame. You stand there at the top of this enormous canyon and think "Wow, this is really amazing", and then you look at your photos and feel none of that. Anyway, here ya go.