Full of praise for Valparaiso

Once again we had a flight that landed slightly ahead of schedule as we touched down in Santiago. Our plan was to catch a bus to the local bus station and from there get a coach to Valparaiso, which is about 90 minutes away on the coast. We made it to the bus stop outside the airport just in time to catch a bus to Pajaritos bus station. It wasn't a long trip and we made it just in time to catch a 3:00pm bus. Actually it was already 3:04pm and we just had time to toss our luggage in the hold and climb aboard. We had to buy our tickets off the conductor later.

Our good luck with connections continued when we arrived in Valparaiso. I had a fair idea of how we could get to our B&B on foot if we felt up to the walk of 40-50 minutes but we figured a taxi was worth it. As we were looking for a taxi rank we were hailed by a local who had done conservation work in Tasmania who guided us to the taxi rank and make sure the driver knew the address we wanted to get to, and even gave us a rough idea of what the fare should be. The end result was that we were checked into our room in Valparaiso before 5pm - not bad considered our flight had been due to land in Santiago at 2:15pm.

Valparaiso is an ineresting heritage listed city. It was a major shipping port until crippled first by an earthquake in 1906 and then the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. It rises very steeply from the waterfront and has lots of cobbled streets, brightly paintedTypical streetuses, and in a number of places, "ascencors" or cable cars, to lift pedestrians from the lower streets to higher ones. We went for a preliminary exploration of the area and selected a little restaurant where we had a nice dinner. Then it was a quiet night in - with still lots of blogging to catch up on.

Typical street scene

Another nice breakfast in the morning - I think we were one of only two couples in residence so the breakfast room wasn't busy. Then it was off to explore this hilly city with its quirky nature. A liitle photo gallery in the block above us wasn't open yet (it was only 10:00am) so we explored the steep and winding streets down to one of the ascencors where 100 pesos (less than 20c) was enough for ride down to more or less sea level. We had a look around the main square in this part of town and had vaguely planned to walk to another ascencor which we could see a little way off. However, the guide we had didn't actually suggest going there and when I noticed a slightly dishevelled man more or less following us in what was a seedy looking part of town we decided to abandon that plan.

One of many murals

Instead we meandered back uphill towards our B&B and ended up having some brunch at another nice littel eatery before going to check out the now open photo gallery. During our wanderings we saw quite a few interesting murals painted on the sides of houses, and of course many of the houses themselves were painted in bright colours. Walking back to our B&B Laura spotted another nice looking lizard but decided it was a bit expensive. Instead we returned to base where I had a short nap while Laura did some proof-reading. Afterwards as we headed out again, Laura had had second thoughts abotu the lizard we had seen earlier and we went back to buy it.

Then, in the inerest of seeing if it was feasible to walk back to the bus terminal tomorrow we set off to try it now, since it also gave us the excuse to explore the streets on the other side of town on the way. It also meant catching another one of the ascencors down. (This one was in the final stages of being extensively restored and looked very new). We had a couple of short detours up interesting looking side streets and around a park but otherwise walked a fairly direct line to the bus station. The markets stalls we had seen just on the other side of the bus station when coming in yesterday were not there today, so they must have been just a Sunday event. Having established that buses left for Santiago about every 10-15 minutes we knew that it really didn't matter what time we decided to leave tomorrow.

One of the ascencors, looking up.

We walked back to our B&B taking a parallel street for the first part of the way - which was a much less interesting one, being heavy populated with car repair shops and the like. We took the ascencor back up rather than tackle the climb (lazy us!). We enjoyed another nice meal at one of the nearby eateries - although being a Monday the place that advertised a tempting fillet mignon was closed for the evening. We went for a little walk down the hill afterwards to see if we could buy a postcard but everywhere was closed uo for the evening so all we managed to achieve was a little exercise. However we couldn't help but notice how much easier it is to climb steep hills at sea level than at an altitude of around 4,000m!

The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast before checking out and setting off to walk to the bus station. It was a pleasant enough walk on what was yet another lovely day - we haven't had any rain on this whole trip. Sure enough we only had to wait about 10 minutes for a bus to Santiago and the final stop on our travels (not counting a short layover back in Buenos Aires for our flight home).