The Painted Port

The Painted Port
Valparaiso, Chile

Valparaiso, Chile

We had not seen the ocean since we were in Lima and for little islanders like us any time away from the ocean is just torture so Valparaiso was already winning for us as our favourite location in Chile before we even got to know it.

After just a few hours on a bus from Santiago we arrived in Valparaiso, made our way to our hostel and were quickly won over by just how quaint and cute Valparaiso was. It may well have helped that the sun was shining and we were warm for the first time in what felt like weeks.

As usual our first tour in Valparaiso was the Tours for Tips walking tour where we had to find our very own Where’s Wally to take us around the city. It turned out that this was the crème de la crème of walking tours, perhaps because Valparaiso is awesome but also because our guide was brilliant, so good in fact that he got the rest of the tip that we didn’t give to the Santiago tour guide.

Our guide was a Porteno (the name given to locals) born and bred and was actually a musican and artist who did these tours because he loved his city and it showed. He took us to the harbour, the main square, we went on one of the city’s old trams, we rode a cute cable car up into the houses in the hills, we listened to a busker, we ate alfojor biscuits from a man’s front door shop, we saw graffiti and the tour ended inside one of the many amazing old buildings that you never get to look in.

Valparaiso is still today a major seaport, it is the home to the Chilean navy and is the main passenger and freight port in Chile transferring 10 million tons annually and welcoming 50 cruise ships with 150,000 passengers per year. The first ship arrived in Valparaiso in 1536 but it remained a small port town until around 1848 when the Californian gold rush made Valparaiso an important stopping point for people and supplies. International immigration transformed Valparaiso and the first non-catholic cemetery was constructed, the British introduced football to the city, the first volunteer firefighting units were formed and Valparaiso soon became one of the most varied of all the Chilean cities. Valparaiso was hit by an earthquake in 1906 which extensively damaged the city and then the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 meant ships no longer needed to pass by causing a massive decline in the cities economy. The architecture from the good times is just exquisite, with huge mansions lining the streets that sadly now are largely abandoned or so you would think. Our guide told us one very interesting story about one of these buildings. It was due to be a grand hotel which was built but never opened as the lack of custom caused by the opening of the Panama Canal left it largely redundant in a struggling economy. Whilst the building looks abandoned there was a little old lady sitting on an office chair in the open front door just watching the world go by, this is Nona, the great granddaughter of the original owner of the hotel and she is just living alone on the second floor living out her days in this now derelict building. Nona has actually sold the building with the intention that it will become a hotel again, but literally it will become a hotel over her dead body as no work can commence until she passes away.

Thankfully Valparaiso fought back from the recession it faced and now has become popular with artists and tourists alike. It is the main shipping port for copper and fruit exports and it is a major university town. The history of the city has mounded it into what it has become today. When you look at the houses in the hillsides, aside from the graffiti that now covers many of them, they are covered with brightly painted corrugated iron. The reason for this is that the houses are mainly constructed in the old fashioned but earthquake proof mud structures, but in order to prevent erosion the properties needed some form of protection which came in the form of corrugated iron supplies which were used as ballast on the ships importing and exporting through the port.

Graffiti has become a major feature in Valparaiso, anyone who is anyone has a piece up here which seems to have become the graffiti capital of the world. From tags to throw ups to full sponsored murals there is barely a wall in the city that doesn’t have some kind of writing on it, although the vast majority of pieces are extremely well done and great to see. There was another walking tour in Valparaiso and it was to view and learn more about the graffiti around the city. It was yet another great tour and Tim and I were the only ones on it which was a treat. We got to learn about different artists and saw some fantastic pieces that we would never have found by ourselves.

Anyway enough of the city and the many many stairs that we had to climb to see it, it was time to take to the sea. As this is a port town it only seemed right to take a boat tour out into the bay to see the city from the sea. We knew that there was a tourist boat that we had seen leaving at the weekend full to bursting point with tourists but mid week it was a different story and there was an indefinite wait to fill the boat before it would leave. So thankfully we found a little man that for just a couple of dollars more than the tourist trip would take us out on our own private boat. After our guide had vanished for a while whilst he got port authority to leave the harbour, we were on our way. Our guide spoke only Spanish but thankfully he spoke clearly and slowly so we could pretty much understand. We did reach a small impasse when he was telling us that we were friends because we were English and because of the Malvinas. Eventually we managed to work out he was talking about the Chilean Navy supporting the UK in the Falklands war, no wonder we didn’t know what was going on!? The tour gave the chance to see the city sprawling over the hills and even got us up close to some sea lions who were just chilling on a buoy in the harbour. Our guide seemed a little surprised at just how excited we were to see sea lions and to be able to get a selfie with them.

We took the train to the beach for an afternoon stroll and were rewarded with sea lions playing in the shore and more pelicans than we have seen in a long time. Valparaiso really did have it all, despite the majority of cafes and restaurants being closed as it was low season (we were regularly told that it should be raining at this time of year rather than shining bright hot sun) but we even managed to find a little beach hut that was open and selling ice lollies, result!

Our final day we took ourselves back the way we had been on our graffiti tour with a fat Chilean street dog in tow and managed to get some cool photos of us interacting with the art.

Our time was up way to fast, this is definitely the sort of place that when the sun is shining you could spend weeks walking, exploring and discovering all the beautiful little spots that this place has.

Food in Chile had been pretty good since we arrived and thanks to a helpful tip from our tours for tips guide we found ourselves in a funny little Chilean diner full of locals and Tim was facing off against a local Valparaiso dish called ‘chorrillana’. This monster of a dish was said to have been invented by students looking to get as much on a plate for the cheapest price and so it is made up of chips, sliced beef, scrambled eggs, chopped sausage, fried onions and some cheese for good measure. This is usually a dish to share but we made sure that we ordered Tim an individual portion, yet lo and behold he was served the biggest pile of food that looked like the same amount they would deliver for two, only it was served on a smaller plate! Needless to say Tim did not finish it but we went back every day to try again!

Sadly it was time to leave and we were taking a trip that we hadn’t really anticipated. With it being deep midwinter Patagonia the last piece of land before the Antarctic is not the most appealing place to go, however we did want to go the south of Argentina and disc
overed that it would be cheaper to travel through Chile to get there as transport in Argentina is extortionate.

So we headed back to Santiago and hopped on a night bus to Puerto Montt, the gateway to Patagonia for a rather different journey to the South….