This week we're in... Valparaiso! A bohemian seaside town half way down the coast of Chile.
The bus ride here wasn't too horrendous considering it took 24 hours and the air conditioning didn't work. I had to peel myself off the leather chair in the morning. When we stopped to get breakfast somewhere and I had "barros jarpa" which was a hot bacon and cheese butty, it reminded me of greasy cafe food from home. Mmmmm...
We finally arrived, checked into Millenium House hostel, which is more like a family run B&B than a hostel, its on the port and has views of the sea. Then we went out for something to eat.
As we couldn't find anywhere cheap to eat we ended up in a nice restaurant in the port, and as we were treating ourselves - I had a big beasty steak. After our meal we were finishing off our drinks ready to head home to bed when we met Alexandra, a 'larger than life', crazy, hippy psychologist who joined our conversation and declared me her new best friend. It was quite surreal, her and her two mates, Ricardo and (another) Alexandra, got us up dancing, sober, in the middle of the restaurant on a quiet Sunday evening, and she kept toasting us, clinking glasses every 10 seconds. We stayed for another drink with the crazy people and at the end of the night Alexandra invited us to her house the following evening for pizzas, beers and more entertaining randomness. She even said we could stay over if we liked. When I called her to confirm the next day she couldn't remember who I was. Needless to say we didn't end up going round for her tea party.
When we arrived in Valparaiso the bus attendant told us that the time had changed, like it does at home for British summertime. We thought he told us it had gone back an hour. Either we misunderstood his heavily accented chilian spanish, or he lied to us to so that the bus would still arrive on time. The time actually went forward. This meant that when we got up the next day thinking it was half 10, it was actually half 12. No wonder the hostel owner looked at us funnily when we asked where breakfast was served! We'd lost 2 hours of our day!
I love Valpo. Its a really interesting, pretty city. From the ocean it goes up almost vertically into the mountains, you can't get anywhere without a breathtaking climb. They even have old funicular trains to take you up some of the steeper slopes. The wooden buildings are brightly painted and look like dolls houses stacked on top of each other up the mountainside, every single one of them is unique with spiral staircases and cast iron balconies. We spent our first day walking up and down the narrow streets admiring the houses and the sea view. We went on one of the funiculars, which is more like a garden shed on a pulley system than a train, and at the top as well as stairs going down there was a slide!! Brilliant idea - although I ripped my new pants on it! :( The graffiti here is amazing too, almost every building has big brightly coloured murales painted on it.
Our friend for the day was a stray dog who we named Patch. Not that he had any patches, but there was a blob of dirt on him that kinda looked patch-like. He followed us on our walk for about 3 miles, waiting in the doorways of the shops we went in and sitting next to us when ever we stopped. We got a pizza for lunch and shared it with him, he would jump up and catch the pieces of pizza in his mouth. Such a clever dog. I don't know why he chose to follow us, we didn't pay him any attention at first, he just set his sights on us and tagged along. When we had to get on a bus to go back down the mountain he sat at the bus stop and watched us drive off until we turned a corner, the look of abandonment in his big brown eyes broke my heart.
Valparaiso is very western, in the centre of the city you could easily be in any big European town. That's one things about South America, there's such a massive difference between the rich and the poor. In any of the big cities you have the centre where all the big white colonial buildings are and the high rises and the Starbucks coffee and McDondalds, like any other major city in the world. But here, as soon as you go a few miles out of the centre the landscape changes completely and you get 5 generation families living together in tiny little rooms made out of wood or mud bricks. That's what England would be like if we didn't have such a good benefits system; Instead of all the wasters living in their council houses with their plasma screens they bought with their job seekers, they'd be in grubby tin huts trying to polish your shoes to make a living. That'd teach them. Obviously here its undeniably worse, I'm not saying extreme poverty is a good thing, it just annoys me that so many people have it so easy at home and abuse the system. Coming here puts it in perspective really.
Anyway, rant over.
In the evening we sat on the beach and watched the sunset and drank red wine. Romantic, even if the wine did come out of a box. The beach is really nice even in winter, much better than Blackpool. I bet its gorgeous summer.
Today's our fouth day here and we were planning to leave, but its pouring down and there's a national strike, so we took it as a sign and stayed in bed, ate chinese food and went to the cinema. Pretty excellent day actually. I really like it here so its worth sacrificing a couple of days in Santiago.
We've stayed in pretty much every night, cooked cheap food in the hostel kitchen and demolished several boxes of red wine. Its been so good to chill out, to have lie ins, laid back days and lazy nights. From La Paz until here we've been really busy, moving on every couple of days and doing lots of exciting things, fast travelling is hard work, its made a nice change to kick back and chill by the beach for a few days, even if it has been cloudy and wet.
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