Valparaiso & Vina del Mar

After a day when the amount of rest I got was well short of the actual rest I should have got it was time for a day trip out to Valparaiso, the old port town on the coast of Chile.  It used to be a huge port as one of the gateways into Central America and then the Panama Canal opened up and the traffic dropped way down.  It was also the home of Pable Neruda, famous South American poet.  I have to confess I don't really know his work but here's a picture of where he used to live .........

And this is the view he had from his front garden.........

Although I suspect with less cranes!

Anyway, Valparaiso is built all the side of the hills surrounding the bay, all different colours and designs. All in all quite stunning to look at as from almost everywhere in the commercial district - the flat ground - you can look up the hillside and see them all dotted around all over the place.  There's very little order to the streets and they are extremely steep.  If you lived further up the hill and didn't have a car you'd be in pretty good shape within a week, but your food bill might be as well!

To help you get up and down there a bundle of 'ascensore' - no idea if I spelt that right or not - they are basically old cable cars that trundle up and down the sides of the hills.  Unfortunately very few are working at any one time since they have got a little aged, creaky and rusty.

It's a shame they don't work, but I think as more money comes in from tourism they will get them up and running again.

From Valparaiso it was off to Vina del Mar, a new town on the other side of the bay.  It's all concrete, resorts and high end apartments with beach views.  Personally not my kind of place, it's a little too soulless.  They do have, however one of these guys from Easter Island

This one is just 9m tall but ones out there apparently get as tall as 22m!  I think that may be somewhere that goes on my list for future travel, but it is a little far away.  It's still another 5 hour flight from Santiago.

I have to admit that after my early morning and late night I was decidedly dragging by the time we got back to santiago around 630.  Fortunately there was one person in the group that spoke English so I did have someone to talk to during the day.  And the rest of the people were nice, but there's only so much you can talk about when you focused one learning the Spanish for 'one more beer' and 'where's the bathroom'!  I do feel I might be picking up a little more here and there.  It's a slow process but since I don't have a lot of choice it's slowly coming to me.

So I made the decision to go out, get some dinner, just one or two drinks and then back to the hotel for a 2230 bedtime..........   Errrrr.........  I don't know what time stamp you see when you read these posts but my brief little stumbling one I posted yesterday to let you all know I was still breathing in and out was sent at 1am.  Oops!  Although not really, I ended up talking to a very nice woman in the Irish pub just down from where I had had dinner.  They had a nice bar you could sit at and I thought she was watching the football on the tv so I asked her about it, she wasn't but never mind :o). So cue a three hour conversation with her pretty good English and my terrible Spanish about the rights and wrongs of the world, relationships and most importantly, "should we get some chips, I'm hungry".  She asked the question, I was relatively positive in my response :o). It's interesting to hear yourself in these conversations sometimes, when you speak your mind impartially it is often a very different response to the one you give when you are emotionally involved.  There are still some sore points for me from the last few years but honestly I think I might be starting to look ahead and with a positive vibe as opposed to looking back.

So there I was again, stumbling back home through the Santiago night, still happily buzzing along at 1am and feeling quite safe I would like to point out.  And here I am now, updating this blog and getting ready to catch my flight out of here to head up to the atacama desert.  I do come back through Santiago but only one night, I arrive late and leave early.  I want to come back again sometime, it's a great place!  Need to study my Spanish first though.

Once up in the desert I don't know whether I'll have good internet connection or not so these posts may end up coming out in a hurry after a few days of silence but hang in there, some of the scenery where I'm heading is truly breathtaking, hopefully I can do it justice!

Oh, and I've run out of paperbacks.  I need to find a hostel or something where I can get some more, unless someone feels like mailing me a bunch more, I can give you the addresses and schedules of when I'll be there.  Just be prepared that they won't be coming back :o)