Stairs and Alleyways

The entire city of Valparaiso is a UNESCO world heritage site. It is a crazy port city where the brightly colored houses cling to steep hillsides. I have never seen anything like it. I was a little worried when the hostel I am staying at gave me the following directions: "Tell the taxi to let you off on Urriola Street at the Fisher Passageway. Climb the stairs until you see number 27. " It was actually really easy to find and the taxi driver knew exactly where to go. Turns out lots of houses only have access in these narrow stairways and not from the street. The city is a crazy maze of stairs, cobblestone roads that switchback up into the hills and buildings covering almost every square inch of land. Quite the shock coming from the tiny little towns I have been staying at so far on my trip. The other great thing about Valparaiso is that there are incredible grafitti murals absolutely everywhere. The city is renowned for its artwork. You can spend all day just roaming around alleys and streets and seeing what you find.

Yesterday I went on a 3 hour guided walking trip with a company where the guides work only for tips. You go on the tour and at the end decide how much the tour was worth to you. A really interesting concept. The tour was fantastic as the guide led us through the maze to show us the highlights. The city has these cable elevators that were built in the early 1900s to transport people up and down the hills. They are still in service and we all piled in the creaky wood cabin for the 30 second journey up one of the hills. It costs about 50 cents to take the elevator. We also rode on one of the ancient trolley buses that service the flat port area at the base of the hills. I finished the day off by wandering around by myself. I think the highlight was this guy in the main square who had skeleton marionettes that he manipulated to sing, play guitar and play drums to classic rock hits. When I showed up he had the Beatles blasting and his little skeleton puppets grooving to the music. Everyone who walked by couldn't help but smile and laugh because it was so ridiculous. Most people, including myself, stopped and watched. It was a really good show. Today is my final day in Valparaiso I will head out for more wandering and visit a couple of museums.

The highlight of today was visiting the house that once belonged to the famous poet Pablo Neruda. The house is situated on one of the steep hillsides and I was sweating by the time I climbed all the way up in the hot sun. Once there I wandered through the 5 floors of the building. There were incredible views of the ocean and surrounding hillsides through all of the windows as well as his odd collections of artwork and other items. My favorite was a giant stone mosaic map on a wall along one of the staircases that showed Patagonia and Antarctica. Unfortunately no photos allowed so I have no evidence to show. The other exciting thing that happened today was that the delicious empanada I stopped to eat ended up being paid for by a group of four Americans that were on a tour. I'm still not sure if my order just got mixed in with theirs and they didn't notice or if they purposely picked up the tab, but in any case I won't complain about free food.

Tomorrow I take the bus back to Santiago and board a plane for a very long journey to Australia. Turns out it is really expensive to fly direct so I am going on a world tour flying first to Sao Paulo, Brazil and then Doha, Qatar to finally end up in Melbourne. I am extremely excited to return to Melbourne. I was last there 7 years ago with my brother and we had an amazing time in the city. After a few days of recuperation in Melbourne I will then head to Tasmania for some more hiking and outdoor adventures starting with a 7 day hike on the world famous Overland Track.

I am sad to leave South America behind with its stray dogs following you around the streets and delicious steaks, empanadas, soups and stews, but I am extremely excited about the next continent. Hard to believe I have already surpassed the 2 month mark of my trip!

Photos:
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