Self-proclaimed as the cultural capital of Chile, Valparaíso is definitely one of a kind. Walking around shortly after we arrived night-before-last, it was a city of shadows - cobbled streets lined with dilapidated buildings with walls of corregated iron, each hidden away in another pocket of darkness carved out among the imposing hills that rise eternally upward from the city's Pacific shoreline. Thanks to LPG's proclamations that "the bohemian among us love it" and "the shutter happy simply tremble at the city's picturesque possibilities", Anna was well in love with the place long before we arrived at its messy bus terminal, and was duly gushing with bohemian (apparently) delight in the mish-mash mess of graffiti-clad walls, dirty streets, and passajes (alleyways) meandering dubious paths up the steep hills - not to mention the sense of being somewhere "so poetic". I don't really buy into pre-determination of places, and my first impressions were of a city that may be fairly cool, but objectively speaking had dog shit on every path every 5 metres, had drunks stumbling around dark alleys whose cobbled stones were lined with broken glass bottles and general trash, where the walls, shutters, statues or anything else were covered in crappy graffiti tags, and where very second street corner stank of human urine. It was 9pm, but in many ways it felt like 3am on a Friday night in one of the shadier areas of Bristol.
With aimless post-arrival wandering achieved, dinner was another excellent affair - SaborColor was scouted (being one of the few places in the vicinity of the hostel that was actaully open), and served up a delectable platter for two featuring pork ribs, beef in some excellent sauce, speciality empanadas and vegetable skewers; washed down (in my case) with the excellent local "cerveja artesanal" - Volcanes Bock. Happy stomach.
The following day (yesterday) was Valpy's* opportunity to prove itself (only to me, of course - Anna was already fronting the Valpo Cheerleaders brigade), and to be fair it has done a pretty good job. For sure, there's still shit of every street, and the multitude of cables that run above every road have about as much visual appeal as said shit, but there's no denying that this place is absolutely out of the ordinary. Ostensibly a port town, it thirived in the late 10th century as the leading port along the Cape Horn/Pacific shipping route, particularly as the Californian Gold Rush gathered steam. Valpy's steam was fairly spectacularly wiped out in 1906, however, when a whopping earthquake decimated the city, and salt was rubbed into the raw wounds 8 years later when those crafty lads up in Panama opened up their eponymous canal. Valpy remains a port town though, and we passed a hell of a long time down at Muelle Prat watching the busy working of the container terminal shipyard.
The real story in Valpy, however, is its artistic heart. Its building may be falling to pieces, but tens of thousands of multi-coloured facades make quite an impression when lined up one behind the other rising up a dramatic hillside; their dilapidation, if anything, adds to it. And the walls are definitely covered in graffiti, but whereas last night's soujourn offered prize views of the sor tof crappy "tags" that pollute railways lines across Europe, today offered a whole different world - phenomenal murals stretching across entire walls, between street furniture, and all combined in one place to form the Museo al Cielo Abierto - "open air museum". You have to take a step back and think about what is actually going on - you are on an average street in a city, surrounded by houses and residential buildings, and here all around you is an art gallery of the highest calibre - on the walls! It is mental - a sense compounded by the ever-present stunning view over the city as you are, as always, atop of a whopping big hill that just goes up and up and up...! Amazing.
From one art form to another, and a further walk up the hill brought us to La Sebastiana - one of the many houses of Chilean poet extraordinaire and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda. I've known of the guy since I was about 10, thanks to that good old source of all knowledge The Simpsons, but in the decade or so that has followed I'd be lying if I said I'd actually read a word of his work. Anna, on the other hand, has been known to cry when reading "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" - Neruda's most noted work; it doesn't take a genius to conclude that she was going into La Sebastiana without quite the same objectivity as your average pleb (in this case, yours truly).
Objectively speaking though, it's gotta be said that Neruda knew how to design a house. For sure, he was clearly a rich jerk with too much money for his own good, but he spent his money on some impressively cool crap. The house - perched on a hilltop - overlooks the whole of colourful Valpy below; the living room, decked with individually chosen chairs, tables, paintings of Kings and Queens and all sorts of other junk, offers a spectacular view out to the Pacific below and, as informed by the excellent audio tour provided, was the scene of annual New Year's Eve gatherings for the best possible view of Valpy's renowned fireworks display. Better still was upstairs - the bedroom offered the same view, but in incredible panorama from the expanse of Neruda's huge bed where he and his wife (one of several) spent their time. Best of all, the top floor study room - again offering the view, but with walls adorned with photos, drawings, all kinds of random crap and - my favourite thing in the whole house - a early sixteenth century map of the Americas, featuring "the island of California", totally missing the existence of Texas, and generally adding and subtracting various landforms at will. A great piece of stash.
Dinner that night was a fairly low key affair - it probably involved meat and beer - but definitely worth mentioning was lunch at "Royal J Cruz" - a fantastic little place hidden up a little alleyway off the main street in town. The food - a traditional chorrillana - consisted of a mahoosive plate piled with fries, covered in spicy pork, fried onions and egg (conservatively described in the LPG as "mountainous"), but of real note was the place itself: every piece of it, from walls to tables to tablecloths and windows, was covered in grafittied messages, photos of patrons, scribbles, doodles - anything and everything. I've never seen anything like it, and doubt I'll ever see the like again. Perhaps a photo of it will appear on this blog one day though...
Today we went out separate ways - as always I took the opportunity to walk and walk and walk and ended up atop of the western end of the Valpy hill at the Museo del Mar Lord Cochrane. Cochrane was a British naval general who helped the Chileans oust the Spaniards back in the day, and had a big role to play in capturing Valparaíso, so is generally loved in these parts (so much so that Neruda even stuck a painting of him up in La Sebastiana). Sadly, and in total contradiction to the opening hours posting on the wall outside the entrance, the museum was closed - but all was not lost as the courtyard offered the best views of Valpy I'd yet discovered, and also randomly met an English chap called Kevin who joined me on a bit of a trek over to Iglesia Matriz - the site of four churches since 1559. The most recent of them doesn't look like much on the outside, but inside it's as impressive a place as you'd care to see - full of colour and ornately decorated chapels and altars.
Time in Valpo is short, however, and tonight it's off back to Argentina on an overnight bus to Mendoza. On reflection, Frederica, a Swiss girl staying in our hostel room, summed up the place fairly well - "a little rotten, but charming".
* Allegedly, Valparaiso's proper nickname is "Valpo" - but "Valpy" seems infinitely more appropriate for its ridiculous nature.
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