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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.

We spent a few days in Santiago, a city we weren’t that impressed by.  There’s nice big tree lined streets, lots of shaded plazas, too much shopping, etc, but nothing that really made it feel unique or stand out. It does have a subway! It’s efficient and clean and costs about 80 cents for a ticket. It was nice to ride it as there are a few miradors in town and we hiked to the tops of them for a view of…well, shadows of mountains. Santiago has a serious smog problem. Perhaps it’s because everyone seems to own a car in this country or everyone’s smoking all the time, I dunno.

We’re still in shock of how expensive everything is. We tried to do laundry and were given a price of $12! We looked around and got our clothes washed for $6, but really, it was less than one normal load of laundry…anyways, we tried Mote con Huesillos. It’s a sugar water drink that’s half filled with cooked wheat and a dried, rehydrated whole peach. It’s served cold and is very refreshing since it was so muggy and hot. I also tried a local drink called a borgoña (white wine and chirimoya juice). It tasted like a sweet sangría.

We visited the Concha y Toro winery, which was okay. We were warned that visiting vineyards in Chile is not the same as in the US or France…so we didn’t have high hopes.  We toured the grounds a bit (we got to eat a cab sauv grape off the vine…and it was sweet and delicious!), saw the cellars and tried their Trio Cab Blanc, Diablo Carmenere and the Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon. I wasn’t in love with any of them to buy, and Matt liked the white the best. It cost about $13 each to do the tour with the 3 little tastings, but we figured we should do a wine tour in Chile while we’re here and it was still fun, though not a very personal experience or loads of free wine.

We spent a night at Casa Roja, which was pretty cool.  It’s an old, big mansion with a shared kitchen, swimming pool, ping pong and a cricket batting cage.   It’s the perfect place for traveller’s in the 20-30 range and the people that work there are HELPFUL, which we are finding is a rarity.

After 18 hours on Pullman Bus, which did NOT live up to it’s hype (a/c broken, broken seats, movies at an inaudible volume), we decided to spend the night in Copiapó, a town about the size of Spokane with about 1 stray dog to every 3 people.  At least it felt like it.

There have been occasional stray dogs in Peru, but this town takes the cake so far in South America.  It was like being back in Spain, where the strays run in packs and don’t get out of your way if they want to lay down in the sidewalk.  We visited the mall as well, which was about the size of Northgate mall with at least 10 beauty parlors and maybe a handful of clothing stores.  Their main plaza is pretty.  It’s filled with palm trees and benches and vendors you see at concerts (bracelets, etc).  The weather is kind of California-like but there’s not much to do in this town and we were quickly bored.  We visited the rock museum (Museo Minerologia) which was interesting, but it’s just 2 floors of rocks labeled scientifically.  Not much bling or pizzazz.  There was one section with glow-in-the-dark rocks.

Our whole reason for stopping here was to take a side trip to the coast to see the National Humboldt Penguin Reserve, but we decided against it.  Chile, while things cost more and it’s more modern, is NOT set up for tourism.  You basically need a car to go or do anything outside of Santiago.  The tourism agencies are outrageously expensive (as are car rentals and gas).  So our option was to take a handful of slow buses to the closest town and hire an agency to take us to the penguins.  No thanks, I’ll wait until we are back in Peru and head to the Islas Ballestas.

We spent the better part of an afternoon researching our options for visiting Lauca National Park, a really cool sounding park (giant volcanoes, a 4.500m lake, vicuñas, vizcachas and hot springs) that is on the border with Bolivia. We were shocked at what the tour agencies were charging for a basic 2 day, 1 night tour ($135 per person) so we once again, took the road less travelled.

We rented a car from Ghama Rent-a-Car and got a beat up Nissan pickup truck. We wanted a cheap, basic car, but they were out and we were out of time. The roads would have been fine for a car (and the gas mileage would have been nicer!) Anyhoo, we packed some food and headed from the deserty coast to the highest elevations that I have experienced. And I only suffered about a half hour of elevation sickness before bed, so my red blood cells must be working hard. The drive wasn’t too long but the scenery got old (dry, dusty desert). We saw some cool candelabra cacti and vicuñas grazing everywhere.

Vicuñas are like wild alpacas and the locals round them up once a year to shave them and set them free. Kind of weird thing to do, but a vicuña sweater will set you back about $1500, whereas the domestic docile alpaca sweater is only about $100. So there are reasons. They are cute, but my heart still goes out to the ewok alapacas and their ´fros.

We stopped in Putre, which is a little town at 3500m that has expensive gas (we used 1/2 tank in the 2 hour uphill journey and were worried to run out of gas. That was the only station we would see) and not much else. We stayed long enough to fill the tank, buy some coca leaves (since mine were taken at the border…but I learned it’s not legal to grow coca in Chile, so they import it from Bolivia…stranger still), and talk to the ranger. Yes, there’s park rangers in Chile! They had free maps and were friendly and helpful.

After we left Putre, we drove to Lago Chungara, a lake at 4517m! And I am proud to report I felt fine, except that it started hailing on us…hmm, a bit cold for camping. We didn’t expect it to be cold enough to snow, so we backtracked to a little cute ghost town called Parinacota. 10 families live in this town and there are herds of alpacas everywhere (and they all have their ears pierced with yarn pom poms, quite fashionable). We couldn’t find a living soul in the town for about 15 minutes, then an old man stuck his head out and offered to house us for the evening (for $10).

The next day we did the 1 hour interpretive trail at the edge of town and enjoyed the crazy amazing views of volcanoes (mainly Volcan Parinacota, over 6,000 m—it’s like looking at Mount Rainier, but it only being 30 minutes away instead of 5 hours like in Seattle). It looks like a melted whipped cream sundae. We had good weather the whole day and went to see the lake again with clearer views (there’s another volcano visible from the lake that you can see the smoke rising like a chimney). We did a little interpretive trail and then drove to the Bolivian border (how many bolivian border crossings will we aproach without crossing? so far 2.) and turned around and drove back on the main road.

We stopped at Las Cuevas, which had another interpretive trail (all of these complete with informative brochures! it was so fun) which lead to a lukewarm hot springs contained in a cute little stone house. We also saw a lot of vizcachas, which are somewhere between a rabbit and a chinchilla. They do not run away, either, which explains why they were hunted almost to extinction. They just kind of close their eyes and lay really still. Not the best tactic, but they were still cute.

My most memorable moment was when a pair of alpacas were laying in the road and we stopped in front of them so as to not kill them and instead of running away, they came up to the truck (one at each window) to say hi.  What curious adorable creatures!  My alapaca friend wanted me to rub it’s fluffy neck and I didn’t want to leave.  That encounter kept me smiling the rest of the day.

We finished our day off stopping by Jujuri Hot Springs, which was wonderful! The sun was out but the air was cold, so it was nice to have a little soak. The set up is at the edge of a gorge with 3 mud baths that cascade into each other. I could only enter the lower one. The top two were HOT. The mud stunk, but people say it’s medicinal. They have a giant pool for swimming, but it must have been 100 degrees. I couldn’t swim in it, but it was nice to just enjoy the view. They also had 2 pools with a roof (nice to avoid the sunburn) and a picnic area. So far we have been to 7 hot springs, and counting.

We decided against the “cold, bumpy long road” from Puno to Tacna, as described in our guidebook. Instead, we spent a night in Puno to de-stress and took a cheap bus back to Arequipa, spent a night there (watching TV), took Flores bus to Tacna (it’s the same price as fancy Cruz del Sur, except on this bus we were literally surrounded by children of varying ages, the ventilation didn’t work so they opened the emergency hatch (which made the air flow directly in my face) and it was noisy so we couldn’t watch any of the horrible movies that were playing, PLUS I had the only guy on the whole bus who wanted to recline all the way back in front of me). Well, the seats DID recline far, which was a plus. I don’t think Matt could have breathed if he had my guy in front of him. Note to self: take Cruz del Sur when returning.

So, we arrived in Tacna, went into the international bus station and took the next local bus across the border ($3…it’s $6 to take a minivan) The ride wasn’t that long, the border formalities were pretty straightforward (our bus driver took care of most of it for us) and I got pulled aside for my contraband: raisins and hoja de coca. Whoops! Chile takes their agriculture seriously (which is good) and there’s major food control at the border. We even saw dogs jumping in people’s trunks sniffing around for somethign that was perhaps not raisins.

Hopefully I can restock my coca supply here, as we plan to go up to some elevation higher than Puno. Right now we’re in Arica, another dusty coastal desert town, but we are obviously NOT in Peru. The streets are all paved with street lamps and yellow lines and are all labeled, the taxis are NOT honking, things cost a LOT more (about 3x more than Peru and gas is $5/gal) and I see a lot of people smoking, especially women. In Peru it was rare to see locals smoke, and it was usually men. The women are much more trendy with the fashion and we are hearing less cumbia and more American music (Jewel, Bon Jovi). We also saw our first McDonald’s in South America and I did NOT support them.