DAYS 149 - 151: VALPARAISO, CHILE

If my sister was a city, she’d be Valparaiso.

Colorful. Artsy. Messy. A little bit complicated. With a heart bigger than life itself and personality that sparkles as the sun goes down.

This crazy little gem of a place is actually a fairly decent sized city that shimmied its way into a network of massive hills along the coastline of Chile - pretty much directly west of Santiago. It was once one of the largest ports in the country, giving tired ol’ sailors a place to kick their feet up for a minute during the long journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914 totally snatched up all the sea traffic and caused the city to fall into ruins. It wasn’t until the 90s when a bunch of artsy folk and cultural entrepreneurs moved in and started revamping it into the quirky little tourist destination it is today.

To say the place has “character” is an understatement. From a distance it looks like a burst of color along the sea. Old dilapidated mansions have been partially restored and painted in bright shades of purple and blue and orange and green. Thrift stores, galleries, cafes and funky little boutiques line the sprawling cobblestone streets - which seem not to care about going north, south, east, or west - but instead wind up and down the hills in whichever way they please. The walls there are not walls, they’re canvases. The steps are not steps, they’re places for painters to show off their pallets. Art is literally everywhere you turn. On fences. Lamp posts. Doorways. Park benches. Everything smothered with bright hues and interesting shapes. There are murals of strange beasts and scenes that take you under the sea. Poetry scribbled into cement cracks. Graffiti scaling the sides of buildings. It’s like wandering around a museum in the sunshine.

Unfortunately, due a wicked flu bug, we were only able to spend 24 hours getting lost in the tomfoolery of it all. But it was a 24 hours I spent smiling ear to ear, totally bewitched. We spent our afternoon eating ice cream cones and lazily strolling the streets. Watching a group of dancers practice their traditional “cueca” outside our hostel window. Riding up and down funiculars - these rickety little contraptions that carry you up and down the hills. But my favorite part was drinking beers on a rooftop patio while watching the windows of buildings twinkle as the sun went down over the ocean and a full moon rose from behind the hills. It felt like magic.

I’ll leave you with an excerpt from a poem by Pablo Nerurda I found that I absolutely loved.

Ode to Valparaiso