Valparaiso, Chile

Valparaiso is a small port city 1.5 hours west of Santiago. The entire city is a UNESCO historical site and it´s famous for its mad array of colorful houses arranged atop various ¨cerros¨or hills. To reach these homes and the narrow streets/alleys that surround them, the city provides ¨ascensors,¨romantic lifts from a bygone era. The city down below is nothing special--it´s the hills that bring the tourists and the romance.

I stayed here three days, but don´t have much to show or report because of the ¨incident¨discussed in my last entry--which caused me to be hungover and camera-less (or shopping for replacement items) for much of my time here.

I did manage to explore a bit though and take one of the ascensors up to view the city. Here are some pics. The first one is from inside the ascensor.




I happened to be riding up with a lovely gentleman leading a group of schoolchildren on a historical tour of the city and he invited me and two Canadian students to join the tour. We spent most of the time in a museum where our kindly guide tried valiantly to make Chilean naval history interesting...and succeeded very occasionally.


New camera and MP3 player in hand, I now hop on a bus for twenty hours to get to the northern Chilean desert. I´m excited to put ¨the incident¨behind me and excited to get north where it will be warmer.