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An hour bus ride from Santiago took us to the coastal city of Valparaíso. It's a bit of a gritty, chaotic place but up on the hill many boutique hotels and expensive restaurants have opened within the old buildings of the UNESCO heritage area surrounded by lots of street art. Unfortunately we weren't staying in any of these boutique places but we did have a great view from our place on a different hill in the town. After we eventually found our hostel and dumped our bags we headed into town to take part in another 'free' walking tour. The girl who gave this one wasn't as good as our Santiago guide but she was friendly and showed us round the interesting streets and alleys. Many of the old buildings are made of corrugated iron and we were surprised that, if carefully looked after, can actually be quite pretty. But for every pretty one there was one ugly one but it added to the character of the place. The street art was pretty cool and was on pretty much every building on the hill. Some had political meaning, which was interesting, as during the dictatorship, self expression (unless approved by the government) was illegal. Due to the streets being really narrow, the city has a real problem with fires - 3,500 people lost their homes in a big one in April 2014. When this happened students were given a month off so they could go and help. A similar community sprit happened up north when the large earthquake struck. When the UNESCO area is hit by fire, properties have to be rebuilt to look the same as they did before but because this is prohibitively expensive, burnt out buildings stand empty in some areas.
On the tour we took two funiculars up the hills, which were really rickety and old. There used to be lots of funiculars running up the many hills but now only 7 run. After the tour we took a third funicular back up the hill and visited a museum dedicated to a satire comic writer 'Lukus'. We didn't get all the messages but some were really funny. We climbed back to our hill and cooked a healthy meal to recover our waist lines and then Katy had an early bed time.
The next day we had planned to have an early/normal start but when the alarm went off Katy re-wrote the day and opted to stay another couple of hours in bed. When we eventually got out we headed to Pablo Neruda's house (one of his three). He was a famous poet, thinker and Nobel prize winner and is very highly thought of in Chile. His house is artistically designed and filled with unusual objects that all have a story and let you understand his fascinating personality. It reminded me of a more refined Salvador Dali house (no disrespect to either artist).
Just as we were leaving, two stereotypical retired Americans (or maybe I should say from the USA as we are in the Americas) started chatting to us about the British Royal Family. They loved them and knew much more about them than we did - it was difficult to get away! We then walked into town and explored some more of the streets that we hadn't seen the previous day. After many more graffiti photos and some expensive chocolate brownies we headed back to our hostel to collect our bags. We had booked a night bus to Pucón in the Chilean Lake District and had splurged by buying the most expensive seats possible - a fully flat bed! As we left Valparaiso and drove through the forested hills with a beautiful sunset we felt that this was the closest we were going to get to a first class flight experience.
Simon
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