Valparaiso

Today we made a little excursion to the town of Valparaiso (pop 270,000), which is the traditional port city for Santiago and the surrounding region, about two hours away on the coast. Valparaiso was a major city in international trade at the turn of the last century, but it faded into obscurity as soon as the Panama canal was opened and trade stopped going around Cape Horn. The entire town is thus still pretty much comprised of old turn-of-the-century-port buildings that range from absolutely stunning villas to rusted corrugated iron shacks that would look shabby in the slums of Calcutta. Many of these have been taken over by artists, and some of the areas have quite a bohemian feel to them, with artists and street performers all round the place. The real beauty of the place, though, is the setting - a large sheltered bay with a small flat downtown and then steep hills behind just covered in beautiful houses. The houses are very brightly coloured, painted in bright blues and yellows and reds, and everything is just a patchwork of angular lines and colour coating the rolling hills.

There were four highlights of the day. The first was the drive out to Valparaiso, through part of the Chilean wine growing area - the sheer scale of the vineyards was incredible - massive valleys just coated from wall to wall with vines - some of those vineyards must have more grapes than all of Marlborough (NZ's best wine growing area) put together!. Next, riding the "funiculars" - because there are so many cliffs and steep hills, they have installed cable drawn carriages everywhere that just go straight up onto the top of the hills. They are a little rickety, being built at the turn of the centry, but fun to ride. Secondly, we visited the house of the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, which housed his odd but fascatinating collection of random objects, and featured a stunning view of the pacific and the town. Thirdly, exploring the incredibly complex maze of streets, alleyways, staircases, and funiculars in the city - lets just say that they didn't try to impose a square grid of streets on this city! In all, we had a great day in Valparaiso.

That's about it for Santiago. Tomorrow we go to church (it is Easter Sunday after all), meet up with Andrea one last time, and then tomorrow night we head south - 16 hrs in a bus to Puerto Montt, then four days by ferry to Puerto Natales, right in the heart of Patagonia. I'm looking forward to it.