Valparaiso

Sunday 6th January

We rose early and dropped off the car at the airport.

We then had to wait for the check in desk to open. Unlike the UK, the desk only opens one hour before take-off for internal flights.

Once back in Santiago, we decided to blow the budget and catch a cab down to the coast and Valparaiso. We figured it would be easier than having to negotiate buses and collectivos with big cases.

The taxi driver was a bit stressed out about finding our hotel in Valparaiso. He spent most of the journey on his mobile phone (not hands free) asking for directions. (He didn’t seem interested in looking at our map.) He then decided to take a back route into the city, muttering “oh my God” and “crazy” as he drove around. He stopped every 100 metres or so to ask people for directions, but drove off before they had finished. We had to tell him the name of the hotel and the street every time he stopped. He certainly didn’t like the place.

Admittedly it is quite a labyrinth, spread over many steep hills or “cerros”. In the end we did make it, but we decided it would be best not to book this driver to take us back to the airport in four days time/

The hotel is a italianate building built in 1907 ( that is, the year after the great earthquake that flattened Valparais0.) Like lots of buildings in Chile, it has a plaster façade, with a rear constructed out of corrugated iron. Inside, the hotel has a distinctive style of décor, with lots of black and white tiles, and red walls. You have to pay extra for a view in this hotel, and we therefore got a rear room with a view of a corrugated iron shack.

We walked down (with the emphasis on down) to the front. We saw our first ascensor funicular, the Reino Victoria, one of 15 in Valparaiso.

We came across Plaza Sotomayor which is dominated by a monument to Chilean war heroes, and in particular Arturo Prat.. Like Simon Bolivar and Bernardo O’Higgins, every town and village has a street named after him. Prat is famoua as the Captain of the Esmeralda, a old wooden boat, that came under fire from Peruvian artillery and the iron clad Huascar war ship on 21 May 1879. Despite having considerably inferior fire power, (the Esmeralda had a 40lb cannon whilst the Huascar had a 300lb canon) when rammed by the Huascar, Prat leapt aboard the Peruvian vessel and was killed.

Artru Prat’s tomb, with other heroes of the Battle of Iquique are under the monument.

Behind the monument is the ex-Intendencia de Valparaiso, a grand, grey building that now houses the Chilean Navy.

We then headed to Muelle Prat, the only bit of the port that the public can visit. It was full of peddlers, souvenir shops and boats jostling in the harbour to take tourists for rides across the bay. In the distance a big cargo ship was being unloaded, and on the horizon were the grey ships of the rather fine looking Chilean Navy.

On the front were several fine façades, and the Turri Clock Tower.

Virtually all date from after the 1906 earthquake.



On the side of the Fire Station we saw a badge which confirms Chile’s close links with Britain.


We found the only vegetarian restaurant in town, but it shuts at 7pm, just in time for dinner!!

We ate savoury pancakes in a very nice café, which gave you bits of poems to read with the bill. (Very sad poems).

Climbing up Atahualpa Street back to our hotel, we were glad of our altitude training in the altiplano.