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I think I may have found my favorite town in Chile (even if I’ve only visited a handful). Valparaíso has been named the cultural capital of Chile and is a Unesco world heritage site and former home of Pablo Neruda. It’s funky, it’s hip, it’s got cool architecture and we had the best meal in 5 months.

Valpo is located on the ocean, sort of, so there’s plenty of breezes but it’s all port. The beaches were a hop away on a bus, but we’re tired of beaches and spent most of our time climbing the million hills in the town. The main drag is loud, noisy and full of people and we were ready to leave the town after a few hours. Sadly, the bus out of town was full and we had to spend one more day, which was a good thing, because we went uphill and discovered the real Valpo.

The city seems to be one big hill but with a LOT of steep valleys chopping up the city into numerous named hills. I enjoyed Cerro Alegre the best, it was filled with amazing, beautiful, crazy artsy murals (Marc could live here, easy) and the views are gorgeous: scattered crayola colored houses in the hills, ocean views. We ate at Epif for dinner and had a half bottle of organic red wine from Chile and ate a grilled burrito that was delicious and a veggie stirfry with a peanut sauce and a chocolate cake/brownie dessert. The staff was nice, friendly and the atmosphere was so chill. I knew we were in the right place when I heard the song play from my first circus performance at Aerlift I.

We wandered by a puppet theater and were just in time to see a performance of El Cuchillito de Verdad. It started off seeming like a traditional Chilean folklore story, then the main character fell off a mountain and went to Hell to work for the devil’s TV show and was later abducted by octopus aliens. At least, that’s what I think happened. It was strange but interesting and I’ll give any puppet show a chance after 4 years of being priveledged enough to watch UConn puppet shows.

Since Valpo is so hilly, there’s a LOT of ascencores scattered throughout the city. They are also called funiculars and they look like box cars on a pulley that climb the hill at a 45 degree angle or less. They’re pretty quick and fun to take, especially since our legs were tired from walking all day. I’ve also discovered that this town has some crazy slides . Steep and fast, we found one we really liked near the ascensor by Cerro Alegre but there’s one near Pablo Neruda’s house that bruised by butt and butt bones. Pure agony. Now I’m wary of the slides I see.

We checked out La Sebastiana (Neruda’s house) from the outside and it looked neat, but neither of us were dying to go inside and see it. We caught the O bus to Viña del Mar and walked around town to find most of the restaurants were closed, so we just had pascualina empanadas (spinach, chard, eggs and cheese) and ice cream and headed back to Valpo to explore more, since we weren’t excited by Viña. We ate at Color Cafe, which is a clutter-filled art cafe run by someone who I think works at the puppet/clown theater. We had a decent meal there while listening to the Amelie soundtrack (circus performance #2 with music by Yann Tiersen), relaxed at our hostal (Yoyo) and then took the night bus to Argentina, because this country is seriously ruining our budget. But Valpo was fun, and I would go back to it over Santiago in an instant. I know there’s more alleys and winding streets we haven’t even touched yet.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 7:09 am and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.