Valparaiso, Chili

One of the steep streets in the hills of Valparaiso.  This one was relatively straight.

20 March 2014

We had two days at sea before reaching Valparaiso.  Chili is a long, long country, especially when you can only travel at 20 miles per hour! It was still too cool to sit outside for long and we didn’t watch any Movies under the Stars because it was just too cold for me. But we did manage to take our promenade walk before retiring for the evening.  We have been doing this on every cruise we have taken and I really enjoy it.

Valparaiso is the port city closest to Santiago, the capital of Chili. So it is a major port for South America. This is the end of one leg of our cruise and the start of the third and final leg.  About 800 passengers are disembarking and a like number are coming on board. We didn’t go to Santiago as it is a two hour drive there and then back and I just wasn’t in the mood to be on a bus for that long.

The port is typical of all that we have seen in South America and offers little to the tourist.  In fact, we were warned not to wander on our own around the port as it could be dangerous. Today, we are taking a half-day city tour. The weather is definitely getting warmer, but it was cloudy and damp for us today.  Felt a bit like Southern California with its June gloom.

The first thing the tour guide did was to take us out of the port city and north to a beautiful resort area called Vina del Mar.  The homes and apartments there are very nice as are the stores and restaurants. We did a little drive around to the important sites and then stopped for about 30 minutes at a small museum that used to be a mansion home. It is now a natural history museum with exhibits related to the Easter Islands. I didn’t go inside because it was not scooter friendly and it would have been too crowded with tourists to really get around.  So Russ toured the museum and I took a little ride around a couple blocks of the neighborhood. It was a pleasant quiet little explore.

Then we headed back to Valparaiso and a tour of the hills. There are 44 hills in this port city and every one of them is jammed packed with apartments and homes painted in practically every color you can imagine. I don’t know how they are attached to the steep hills because they looked to be perched very precariously. And this, obviously, was where the poor make their homes. I saw abject poverty with families living in buildings with broken windows and holes in the walls. I would be surprised that there is much availability to city water and sewers. The streets felt like they were vertical at times and I had to greatly admire the driver’s ability to get the huge bus around the tight corners and down the very narrow streets. There are several funiculars, some of them working, which the locals use to get up and down the hills.

Even though many of the buildings look like they should be condemned, overall the streets were clean and the people very friendly. At one point, we exited the bus and walked about 5 blocks down one of the hills to a lookout of the port area. We walked past the Chilean Naval Academy and had the opportunity to see some of the sharply dressed students.  They are very proud of their navy; indeed, the entire city seemed to be full of Navy related buildings, either schools or administration or old historical buildings. And these facilities were in good condition compared to most of the other buildings.

Then it was off to the town center and the Plaza de Armas.  Every town of any size has a Plaza de Armas. We were told that, in the days of Spanish rule, it was required that all arms be brought to the plaza and placed under Spanish guard for the night. The Plaza de Armas was where the arms were guarded. Over time, the plazas evolved to a place where the locals gathered to trade goods and where statues were placed to commemorate important people or events.

We got back to the ship in early afternoon and ate some lunch on the Lido deck. Valparaiso really didn’t have much to distinguish itself for a tourist in my opinion, but it was nice to get on land for a few hours.

Didn’t get many good sunsets on these sea days, but Russ did capture a nice night sky photo.



A non-working funicular near the port.



Along the shoreline on the way to Vina del Mar.



This canal looked a little like the canals in Ft Lauderdale. The housing here is quite expensive so only the upper class can afford to live in Vina del Mar.



A flower garden clock.



One of the fancy high rise apartment buildings in Vina del Mar.



A Catholic church and school.



There are six university campuses in Valparaiso, this one is dedicated to Engineering.



The government’s Capitol building is in Valparaiso, not Santiago, which is the capital of the country. Not sure why. The legislature was in session, but not on this particular day.



A Moal outside the Fouck Museum. Chili is quite proud of its Easter Island.



Kind of reminds me of the pumpkin faces I do at Halloween.



Pre Incan Chileans practiced mummification.



And shrunken heads was apparently a skill learned from neighboring countries such as Brazil and Columbia.



Pre Columbian pottery.



Some of the fish found in local waters, including the puffer fish in the lower right.



Look how tiny the Humboldt penguin is compared to the Albatross.

A Rodin sculpture outside a palace which was next to the Fouck museum.

We were treated to a juggling display while waiting for a light to change



These homes are just jam packed on the hillsides of Valparaiso.



Some of the buildings built into the sides of the Valparaiso hills. And this is earthquake country – I don’t know how these survive.

Another funicular.



And this one is actually working.

The streets are so steep, many have staircases for sidewalks.



There doesn’t seem to be centralized shopping, instead, every now and then, a street corner contains stores and shops for the locals.



Along with copious graffiti, the walls often had very interesting murals.



Many of these buildings did not look like they were inhabitable, but we saw lots of evidence of people occupying them including hanging laundry and chairs out on the balconies.



In the hills, some of the older buildings were gingerbread Victorian designs built by early British settlers. This is a Catholic church.

I love the bright colors of the buildings.  Maybe I will try lavender the next time we need to paint our place.



The corner of a naval administration building in downtown Valparaiso.

This is the entire naval building.  It sits on one side of the Plaza de Armas and is beautifully restored. It now houses a museum.

The Naval Academy had beautiful iron fencing surrounding it.

The obligatory statue in the center of the Plaza de Armas.

The ship moored right in the center of the port. We weren’t allowed to wander around the port because of all the container traffic.

As the ship left the port, fog started rolling back in. I got the feeling that they have a marine layer similar to what we experience in the Los Angeles basin area; "late night and early morning low clouds clearing to haze by mid-day."