Hola todos! After my hurried exit from Santiago I decided to stay in a small town near Valparaíso by the name of Viña del Mar. This place wasn’t much to write about but it was only 10 minutes on the colectivo to Valparaíso.
So off I went to Valparaíso and again booked onto one of those free walking tours. Where the tour. Starts in the lower town it’s a bit grotty and looks rough but meeting up with the guide she explained all the lower town used to be ocean back in the day so nobody lives down here really. With that started turns out it was only me booked today so kind of get a private tour.
As we start heading up the hills I chat to my guide, she us actually French and moved here 2 years ago after falling in love with the place on her own backpacking trip. Was interesting to chat about that while I told her what I was doing as well. She actually gave me some good recommendations for Chilean Patagonia too which I am now days away from after nearly 8 months on the road!!
Now on to Valparaíso, this is a purely European style city as it was quite late to develop into a major port. Valparaíso became the main port of Chile from 1810 and by the 1830s it was a coastal boom town with most of its growth coming from European settlers namely British. French, Italian and German colonists. Because of this the city has a very diverse mixture of European style buildings in the style of what quarter was settled by whom.
In among all this classic architecture can be found loads of small streets completely lined with street art, all of it drawn by hand with pencils and pen so it takes ages but almost all the artists are local here. It’s impossible to remember what every painting means but the overall gist of it was it was a subtle act of rebellion during the Pinoche era and has since become a means of freedom of expression in the modern days. Many of the murals are of a political nature representating some event or someone who ‘disappeared’ during the Pinoche regime.
What else to note? Valparaíso isn’t the biggest port here anymore though it still is the second largest port and also is where the Chilean Navy is headquartered, despite this the towns economy very much depends on tourism and when COVID hit much of the money got wiped out. My guide told me it’s only now starting to pick up but the city has a bad reputation as during that time things got quite dangerous here but it is slowly recovering these days. In the lower town I can see why it had that reputation though in the upper levels there was quite a tight sense of community there where it looked like everyone knew everyone.
We came to the end of this tour and I hanged about for a bit and had some lunch there. I did consider moving over and staying there for a day or 2 but decided no, better to keep moving and put some more distance between me and Santiago. Also sooner we reach Patagonia sooner we can slow down again.
So now I am on my way to Concepción, a city halfway between here and the entrance to Patagonia. It will be a short stay there before we effectively reach the ‘Gates of Patagonia’
If anything interesting happens will be sure to mention on the next installment.
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