Roam: Valparaíso, Chile: walking tour and wall art

Valparaiso rooftop view

We traveled by subway and bus from Santiago to Valparaíso, which was a quick, easy and pleasant journey. Valparaíso sits on the coast and has been called "Little San Francisco" and "The Jewel of the Pacific" during its heyday. In 2003, the historic quarter of Valparaíso was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Valpo, as it is often called, is not a small town; it is the third largest metropolitan area in Chile. We were excited to come here in part because Nik's sister and her family live in Valparaiso, Indiana. The city in Indiana was named after this city in honor of US naval officer David Porter's participation in a battle near Valparaíso in the War of 1812. Porter County in Indiana is named for him, and Valparaiso, IN, was originally named Porterville, but the name was changed a year later, in 1837.

Boys enjoy the front row, top level views from the bus on the way to Valparaíso.

The adults enjoyed the views of the vineyards from the bus. We are eager to visit.

Our first impression of Valpo was "gritty," as we walked the short distance from the bus station to the building where we were renting an apartment. We walked through a park, Plaza O'Higgins, in and around which many people were selling used clothing and all manner of other things laid out on blankets on the ground. While the area of the city where we arrived (which is not the historic or touristy part) seemed a bit down at the mouth, the apartment building is sparkly new. It apparently was just completed in December. The building has a twin tower that is not yet completed. We found the apartment through Airbnb, only a few days before we arrived. Nik would be going back to Oregon to work and the kids and I would camp out here for the three weeks he'll be gone, so we were looking for a comfortable place in a good location with great wifi, so that the kids could concentrate on their online home schooling. We were happy with our find, although the internet was not quite as promised for the first week. We did survive!

City view from the roof of our apartment building

View from our 11th floor apartment. The modern building on the left is the national congress building. Even though Santiago is the capital of Chile, the congress has met here in Valpo since 1990. You can't tell from this photo, but it has a cut out in the middle, shaped like an upside down U.

Pretty church outside our window. We are treated to church bell music at various times of day.

Sully dines on our balcony with the hills beyond

We did some exploring, including a seafood dinner in the upper level of Mercado Cardonal, a walk to the busy port (muelle) and a metro ride to Viña del Mar to check out the nearby beaches.

Plaza Simon Bolivar

Our first dinner in Valpo was at an informal seafood restaurant in the Mercado Cardonal.
Spicy shrimp, among other things. A cat came to beg at our table.

Apples arriving at the market. The apples we had seen in the grocery
were imported from the US, but Chile produces a lot of apples too.

The busy port in Valparaiso. This is the main base of the navy; naval ships are seen in the background.

Viña del Mar, just up the coast from Valparaiso

The day before Nik had to leave to go back to Oregon for work, we decided to take a walking tour of Valparaiso that we discovered through Keteka (keteka.com), the community-based adventure travel company through which we had arranged our excellent GeoTour in Peru. We were looking to get to know Valparaiso and appreciate its beauty and history. This is exactly what we got, and we had a great time along the way. Our guide, Cristian, introduced us to the various forms of public transportation, including 1950's vintage trolleys, buses, funiculars and colectivos (taxis that follow set routes). He took us to some beautiful locations popular with tourists and plenty of off-the-beaten-track places as well. We enjoyed learning the history and personality of Valpo. We stopped at a homemade candy shop, sun print photography studio and met one of Valparaiso's wall artists whose work we got to see around town. We toured Pablo Neruda's house as well, which we enjoyed very much.

Our walking tour guide, Cristian, from Ruta Valparaiso

Among the many things we learned about Valpo on our tour: the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 was the end of Valpo’s golden age, because most ship traffic stopped passing by here, no longer having to travel around the southern tip of South America. Before the canal opened, there were many European expats in Valpo and a lot of wealth.

There was a devastating earthquake here on August 16, 1906, only 4 months after the famous San Francisco earthquake (April 18, 1906). Most buildings were ruined. Before the earthquake, rich immigrants from Europe had built mansions along the bay in the flat part of Valpo. The Viña del Mar area just up the coast from Valpo had just been vineyards, no houses there. After the earthquake the enterprising owner of the land there marketed it to the rich Europeans as a better place to rebuild. That was the beginning of Viña del Mar, a flashier, more upscale resort town. The rebuilding in Valpo was mainly done by the less affluent, so cheap building materials had to be used: adobe brick and wood, covered by corrugated metal to protect the structures from rain. Now many buildings still have the corrugated metal exteriors, many painted bright colors.

The origin of the brightly colored houses may have been homeowners wanting to be able to see their houses from the bay, but also the paint from ships was used to paint houses. When a ship was being painted, homeowners would go to the port and ask to have some of the leftover paint. So depending on what color paint was being used on the ships, newly painted houses would be the same color.

Cristian told us that people in Valpo are used to having to rebuild, thanks to the fairly frequent earthquakes. The last biggie was in 2010, 8.8 on the Richter; 525 people died in all of Chile. A wildfire blazed through Valpo in April, 2014, destroying 2500 houses and leaving 11,000 homeless. Cristian pointed out that Porteños (as people living in Valpo are called) don't see their houses and belongings as permanent. I guess it is a good lesson to value what is most important and be able to let go of impermanent things like houses and "stuff".

Lots going on in the port!

The funicular (ascensor) Artilleria. One of 15 in Valpo, though only half are currently running.
Also a precariously placed Victorian house.

El Peral funicular

In addition to the trademark brightly painted houses covering the crowded hills of Valpo, wall art is extremely common and gorgeous. The artwork is a big draw for tourists coming to Valpo, and we enjoyed seeing and photographing a lot if it.

Some spectacular wall art

Self portrait wall art; we later met this artist, who also worked on the wall above.

White ants painted on the sidewalk lead to this artisan candy shop.

Our kids had to try some of these handmade suckers after we got to watch some being made.

Very cool sun print photographs at Hiperfocal studio; negatives are placed on
photo-sensitive paper in the sun to create these artful images.

During our tour, we enjoyed visiting the house of Chile's Nobel-winning poet, Pablo Neruda. He also had a house in Santiago, and one south on the coast on Isla Negra, both of which are also museums. Pablo Neruda was quite a character and really liked to collect interesting objects and paintings. He had a wooden carousel horse from Paris in his living room, near the fireplace he designed, a very modern work of art. He bought a painting of a queen with a ruffled collar, then bought another painting of a nobleman wearing a similar collar and placed it across the room from the queen so she would feel more comfortable and they could gaze into each others eyes. The house has four floors and lovely views of Valparaiso throughout. Pablo Neruda loved watching the ships come and go in the bay below, and his house's decor has a nautical feel to it.

In addition to being an amazing poet, he held many diplomatic positions, including in Argentina, Spain and Mexico, and was elected as a Chilean senator in 1945 (Communist party). He was exiled in 1949 for political reasons and lived in Paris, protected by friends there including Picasso. He was able to return to Chile after 3 years when the political climate had shifted back. He was appointed by President Allende as ambassador to France in 1969. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971. He might have been exiled once again after the 1973 coup that launched the Pinochet dictatorship, however Neruda was in the hospital with prostate cancer at the time. He died only 12 days after the coup, and many suspected foul play; there were reports of him receiving a suspicious injection. It may not be a poetic coincidence that Chile's great poet died so soon after Chile's freedom disappeared and a dark era began. Amazingly Neruda's body was exhumed in 2013 by court order to test for poison that may have killed him. None was detected. Quite a life and quite a story!

Pablo Neruda's house, La Sebastiana.

Back in 1997 we chose one of Pablo Neruda's many love poems (Sonnet XVII) to be read at our wedding. Here it is:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

(Translated by Stephen Tapscott)

We learned from Cristian that the best way to get to know Valpo is to wander, and always try to take the route that makes the least sense. One is more likely to find interesting things that way. Kind of like life.

We see many dogs on the streets in Valpo, usually completely sacked out. Cristian says that they are more lively at night. He says that these are not all homeless dogs. Many have owners or are fed cooperatively by neighbors, but often the dogs just hang out outside and do their own thing. When walking around here, one must keep an eye out for surprises on the sidewalk.

We saw a fair number of cats hanging around too.

Even more wall art...

This appears to depict why there are so many dogs in Valpo. Not sure about the demon-eyed guy.

After our generous half-day tour that lasted from 9:30 until after 3, Cristian left us off for a late lunch at J Cruz (pronounced "hota" cruz), for the popular chorrillana: a pile of fries topped with steak and onions. We enjoyed the very eclectic decor there, as well as the live music from a charismatic singer/guitarist. We sat at one end of a long table, and our young Chilean table mates requested a photo of us all.