A relatively small port city located two hours west of Santiago, Valparaiso is steeped in history and in geography. Rising up from the ocean side are numerous hills that make up this once famous and extremely important South American port which has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 2003. It’s these hills where most travellers dedicate their time when visiting and not to go against the grain this is what we decided upon too.

Arriving by bus in the middle of the afternoon we hailed a taxi and after being dropped at the top of Cerro Alegre (the most tourist orientated and therefore safe area) we began searching for a hostel – again with our trusty lonely planet guide in hand. As is often the case we eventually decided upon the first hostel we visited and made our way back to it. It was conveniently, or not as some may think, located close to the top of said ‘cerro’ which provided us with not only great views over the town and ocean but also kept us away from the noise of the busier streets nearby.

Late evening approached quickly as we strolled around the small area of cafes, restaurants and bars before we decided to head down into the main centre of the city to get something to cook for dinner. We were surprised, after being in the aesthetically pleasing neighbourhood of Cerro Alegre to come across a quite grey and run down looking city centre. Filled with unaesthetic graffiti, rubbish, stray dogs and foul smells. Needless to say we were pleased to locate the supermarket quickly and head back to the much more appealing area we had chosen to make our base in.

Valparaiso is also famous for its tram like escalators known as Funiculars or Ascensors that climb up the steep hillsides and provide you with a more than welcome shortcut back to the top as believe us it is a long way. For the small price equivalent to around 25p we opted to use the closest one to our hostel to cart the groceries back up and save our lazy legs the journey. Back in the comfort of the hostel we made enough spaghetti bolognese to feed the whole city and hit the hay. If you ever find yourself in Valparaiso make sure you make use of this system, not only is it rather unique but also a very important and historical aspect of the city, as well as being quite fun.

The next morning we set out down to Plaza de Armas (the main square – which almost every town, city and village in SA seems to call their own) to meet up with a recommended walking tour. We often opt for walking tours as they are tip based and provide, on all of our previous experiences, a fun and interesting way to learn more about the city we are in from local people. This walking tour however proved to be an exception to the rule. It was organised by a group called the ‘Wallies’ who fittingly for the name dress in red and white stripes. Usually the tour guide doesn’t give you a ‘expected or usual’ tip amount but this guide informed us that the average tip amount is around $25 per person. If we’d of been drinking we would of spat our drink out at hearing this. Considering the amount of people on the tour and eventually the quality of the tour (which we now expected to be the best yet) this amount is absolutely extortionate. We were gob smacked and still joke about it to this day. We met with around 40 other people in the square and after being split into three groups we were led to the port. This was the most interesting part of the tour and it was explained to us that Valparaiso was once the most important port in South America and used by almost all boats heading to the north. These days the port is only used for local and the west of South America due to one of the other places we have visited on this trip – the Panama Canal. Valparaiso provided a stop over for boats coming around Cape Horn from Europe and Africa but since the construction of the canal its importance has faded dramatically. The city now relies on tourism as its main income.

After this we were taken on a local bus to show us how to use them. We couldn’t help but feel that anyone could of worked this out as it is no different to any other country’s bus system as far as we could make out. The next stop was the previously mentioned escalator which we had already used into the hillside of Valparaiso. Having already used the funicular system we were not as excited as the other members of our group but still enjoyed using them again. At the top of the funicular was a great lookout spot over the port of Valparaiso as well as lots of graffiti, this time pleasing to the eye and to ours, mostly Hayley’s delight, a small slide which she insisted on going on multiple times, taking it in turns with local kids to hurl herself down at what seemed like ridiculous speeds.

We were then walked around the same area we were staying in so decided to duck out of the tour early and disappear to explore more ourselves.
Our tip would be, forget the tour, explore yourselves, it’s much faster and easily done.

We decided to head in the opposite direction of the tour and stumbled across an area full of artistic graffiti, a few museums, local shops and the best views out over the ocean we had seen yet on the other side of Cerro Alegre.

Exploring this alternate neighbourhood ourselves was much more entertaining and only increased our opinion on the beauty of Valparaiso’s hillside neighbourhoods. The city is famous for its graffiti which can be found everywhere, mostly beautiful, elaborate and amazing work, filled with colours, crazy patterns and symbols and makes for some great pictures. Our favourite spot was a small alleyway containing some steep steps only about 100 metres long but what took us around half an hour to walk through as we gazed in amazement at the sheer brilliance and skill of these artists work.

The rest of our day was filled by walking along the hill tops towards a house and museum owned by an extremely famous Chilean poet/diplomat – Pablo Neruda. In fact, he  drew much inspiration from this hard-working port town, and described Valparaiso better than we ever could with his quote: ‘Valparaíso, how absurd you are…you haven’t combed your hair, you’ve never had time to get dressed, life has always surprised you.’

We got some great weather, great views and an even better empanada from a small local store en route and reflected on our time here. Valparaiso provided us with a quiet, relaxing and satisfying break from the big cities which was just what we needed before we flew over to Brazil to begin our journey to Rio for Carnaval. We were pleased to have visited and would recommend it to travelers who have extra time in and around Santiago!

Read on about the first experience of Brazil and our shocking attempts at Portuguese in our next post.

‘We’re not hippies, we’re happies’

Jonny & Hayley 🙂