VALPARAÍSO
Rounding out our trip was a two night escape to Valparaiso, a coastal town 1.5 hours away from Santiago. Valparaíso is famous for its street art and steep hills so I thought it was going to be a nice quaint trip to cap off the otherwise intense trip. It only took our first Uber trip to our accommodation to prove me wrong — speeding up the twisted near vertical cobbled stone streets entirely covered in multicoloured multi-storey art.
Valparaíso has been shaped by its time as a major port in the early 18th century. It’s still got its gritty and wild aura. It has been ransacked by pirates multiple times, housed countless prostitutes, dock workers and seamen and survived multiple devastating earthquakes. English, German, Austrian, Italian and French immigrants (to name a few) have made Valparaíso what it is today, just as much as the Spanish colonisers. Chile is an overwhelming Catholic country — but with all the diversity in Valparaiso, they had to build two grave yards to keep them separate. Bodies from all over the country were shipped to the port as it had one of the few non-Catholic graveyards. It was fascinating wandering around the earthquake cracked grounds on the hill and learning about the old families. The immigrants also brought their cuisine and architecture to the port too — there’s great pizza, macarons, cakes, seafood, German mansions and New York-eque sandstone high-rises.
We spent our first evening exploring our neighbourhood in Cerro Alegre. It’s impossible to convey the scale of the street art in the city — especially in the area we were staying. Almost every house, wall, stone and brick has been painted with a earthy vixen or angry social commentary. “Tourism’s worse than trump” read one. Perhaps this is why a car full of teenagers heckled me for taking a photo. My personal favourite street art was the pieces from the early 90s which have been protected under a ‘Gallery of the Sky’ initiative with their subtle, muted patterns. We watched the sun set over the bay from one of the many lookouts, as we listened to a group of young people playing the guitar and singing. It was very idyllic, so idyllic that a woman proposed to her girlfriend right next to us. After the sun set, we stumbled across a group of all ages dancing a traditional latin dance in the street.
When we left the area to grab some dinner, we saw that the musos were also preparing lines of cocaine right on their laps. I also saw a guy swing his clear plastic bag full of weed around as they joined the street party. I would have said it was a liberal town if it hadn’t later seen a young girl being escorted in handcuffs by 5 police.
I started to become nervous that Valparaiso was a one trick pony, but after trudging down the smelly, impossibly steep and long steps to the financial district I knew immediately that there was more to the port. It was wild; people everywhere, endless men selling fruit and vegetables on the road (not footpath) and beautiful old marble highrises. We eventually found the UNESCO listed area which has an old church as the centrepiece. An old woman who was sitting near it’s corner yelled something at us which neither of us understood. We continued on and found almost ten sketchy looking men sitting on the church steps, asking us the time, then slowly following us around the church. Outside another woman came up to me and angrily pointed at my camera that was hanging around my neck and backpack. It was no use — I had no idea what she meant. Later we hypothesied that perhaps the women were warning us against carry our expensive goods around the area with ‘TOURIST’ tattooed on our foreheads.
The bars, streets and restaurants were more than enough to occupy us, but we wanted to at least one offical visit. One of the poet and diplomat Pablo Nardua three houses is perched high in Valparaiso and is now a museum. It was great to learn about his socialite ways and ethos on life and art. Whilst tourism is ever present in the town, there also seems to be a thriving artist community. Saws shaping sculptures roared, artists washed their paint brushes in the street and latin beats wafted through our window throughout the evening from the nearby culture centre. It also seems to be quite an academic town too — hole in the wall book shops sold high brow philosophical texts and classic poetry. Yet another unexpected pocket of Chile.
The Streets of Valpariso
Naruda’s House
Valparaiso Cemeteries
