Friday 7th December

At last - another lie in with a whole day free to please ourselves and explore Valparaiso.
We awoke in our beautiful high- celinged room with its lovely wide bay window looking out over the whole of the city, port and coastline below us.
Breakfast in the Zero hotel is served at the relaxed time of 9-11 and the best breakfast so far, served to us by a lovely man who has exactly enough English to have a polite conversation, and seems instinctively to know when to leave guests in peace to enjoy the view, and when to appear around the corner with a fresh pot of coffee! The freshly squeezed orange juice is wonderful and there are strawberries and cherries, followed eggs anyway you like them, to order.
After breakfast we really enjoyed an hour’s down time, sitting in the armchairs in our bay, with the windows open catching up on some admin, before setting off to run along the coast south for a bit. Initially we ran steeply down into the town, past groups of people admiring the amazing street art, which is everywhere! We ploughed on through the docks, where the cruise ships and the Chilean navy put ashore, past the container cranes with their stacks of multicoloured containers which in some ways resembled the colourful murals, and then, finally, out along the shore passing several viewpoints, rocky shores, sandy beaches and a lighthouse.
Out on the Playa Ancha peninsula there are far reaching views out over the Pacific Ocean, but the area inland here is less beautiful - dirty, scruffy and dilapidated.
A large part of this area is occupied by the cemetery. At first glance we thought the buildings here were rows of derelict houses but in fact they are mausoleums like the ones we saw in Buenos Aires. Much less grand here, though, with many of the buildings looking like Tower Hamlet style multi-storey blocks, where each front door or window represents a marble tomb or shrine, or a small space where a coffin has been inserted and a stone panel placed in front. Some panels are broken, some spaces are empty and we wondered how it all works. The whole place had a sad and neglected feel.
We pressed on through the squalid backstreets past rows of single storey ramshackle dwellings. A glance through an open door revealed only one room- TV and sofa in one corner, table computer and chairs in another and a mezzanine shelf with a bed on it. At least 3 children were visible inside...! We stopped at a small shop to buy water and to our surprise were greeted most warmly with a gleaming smile and perfect English (Good morning, where are you from!). The cashier, however was seated in a caged booth in the corner and we noted the bars at every window. Eventually google maps brought us back into the more familiar port and old town.
The street art is everywhere throughout all areas of the city and is amazing, considering it is often painted on corrugated metal panels.
We had a quick shower at the hotel and then stepped out on our self guided walking tour to view more street art and for lunch - we located our chosen restaurant for supper and managed to reserve a table for 8pm then back to the recommended lunchtime cafe -El Peral - however acrid black smoke was wafting up the hillside and over the terrace from a fire at the port and so we opted to retrace our steps to where we had seen an artist painting a wall mural in a cafe. We ordered the set menu of salad and seafood chowder and ate as the artist, a girl in baggy yoga trousers stood astride a tall aluminium step ladder with a Tupperware box of paints tied around her neck, brush in one hand and mobile phone bearing her planned design in the other. As we watched, she created the head, face and upper torso of an early tribesman on the wall. She just seemed to dab and rub the wall, and the image appeared. Quite remarkable. One minute a grey-blue splodge of paint, the next minute a sculpted pectoral muscle or a furrowed brow, squinting into the sun.
After coffee we started our tour in earnest! At least, we got as far as the heladeria around the corner where we fell to the temptation of dulce de leche and vanilla ice creams.
We negotiated our way down narrow lanes and steep steps admiring and taking photos of street art everywhere. There were portraits of natives, wildlife, nautical scenes, fruit, animals and sci fi fantasy images. Our favourite was one painted by ‘Mr Papillon’ of a young girl, arms aloft and face full of joy.
At one point we took a ride on one of the famous ‘ascendeurs’ for the grand sum of 100 pesos (12pence) each. This consists of a small funicular - with two eight person cabins one on each end of a steel hawser. As one rises the other descends on rails. Some motorised assistance is required as the upward journey is of course far more popular than the downhill trip. We arrived back at the hotel and sat for a while admiring the view of the bay with all the shipping at anchor in the sun. We savoured some beer and fruit before starting our packing, in anticipation of our 7am departure tomorrow.
Dinner was at the highly recommended ‘Puerto Cocina’ which gets rave reviews and mention of crowds and queues! We were quietly smug about having booked ahead, however, on arrival there was only 1 other table occupied! We thought that the religious holiday might have brought people out early, but maybe the opposite was true? The place filled up by the time we left at 10, but it was strangely quiet at first.
The food was wonderful. Everything was in Spanish but we knew the words for sea bass (corvinia) and were very familiar with the traditional pisco sour and Ceviche, which we thought we should try here as a pretty safe bet. It was a great choice.
At this point a young man entered with his guitar case and started playing pan pipes and Spanish guitar - apparently he was from Bolivia. The music was great but was so loud that all hope of conversation was gone and after a dozen or so songs, we left him playing to an almost full house and headed back to the hotel to finish packing.