Summer Diaries #4: Santiago-> Valparaíso-> Viña del Mar
3 days in one, this will be long.
Cerro San Cristobal:
Couldn't leave before visiting Cerro San Cristobal, so we woke up early in the morning and got there on foot, which is perfectly doable but took a little longer than I anticipated and I wouldn't recommend if the sun is high up in the Summer sky. CSC It's a hill with a big variety of attractions: panoramic views, zoo, swimming pools, Botanic/Japanese gardens, a sanctuary, restaurants and even a museum!
No time to visit all of that, but we did buy Funicular and cable car tickets, which carry people up and down from the main entrances to the sanctuary. Funicular is ridiculously inclined, literally goes from base to the top, great view. This funicular pic taken from its own website:
From the sanctuary we took the cable car. Great view as well, although a bit too close to an oven in the Summer. Two stops: one in the heart of everything and the last one at the other base of the hill, from where we walked to the Japanese Garden, in company of some dog following us.
View from the Japanese Garden (my favorite, lovely area, very relaxing):
Obs.: unless Fer kills me, some of her pics will show up here in replacement for my lost ones *enough with the mocking... ok, Pemais?*.
Back to the hotel to get in the pick-up truck (odd!) to Valparaíso. Landscape looked like a desert, which reminds me I need to go back and visit Atacama and... every little piece of Chile =D. But yeah, Valparaíso. The first time we all saw the Pacific ocean! Wee! More than anything, what comes to mind is how Valparaíso -World Heritage nod- really has its own ID. Colorful houses crawling up the hills, tight streets with not so gentle curves. Old buildings and monuments side by side with a lot of color, chaos and poverty. Almost too much for your eye to take in and easy to link straight away with slums, but that's how the city naturally developed. Here's our B&B (the yellow one):
It had a nice terrace/restaurant with live music:
Across the street:
After lunch we rolled down the hill (or something) to the main avenue, catching a (400 bucks!) bus to Viña del Mar, hoping to exchange money in the process. That ended up consuming time, but forced us to see unlikely places in Viña, a much more sober (lol) town, with cute buildings, trees, fountains, flowers, a rather pleasant coastline and I know amazing mansions, but we didn't get to see those.
Be sure to bring an umbrella, wild sea =D.
Sunset over Valparaíso
The famous (?) Flower Clock
And then back to Valparaíso, where we went to a supermarket that had a pretty cool basket. I had never seen them, let me be a happy kid, ok? Street market, free jazz show, climbed the evil steps back to the hotel (there are elevators all across Valparaíso and yet I didn't see any :-S) and took my tripod out for a few night shots. They looked a little bit like this:
Shower and bed, with the restaurant music and probably some stupid American sitcom on TV. Oh, globalization, how I love thee.
Next day a visit to Pablo's Neruda house, La Sebastiana, quite peculiar. More walking through the hills and seeing the older part of the city, back to the hotel. Some random pics from wiki:
Boarding time! Which went smoothly. Not. So, 4 people, 3 weeks in Patagonia, loads of luggage, not enough space for everybody in one cab. After a 20 minutes walk, we get to the Customs building. The street was crowded, the ship was docked a few meters away, things looked normal... thing is, we couldn't find the check-in hall at all, or the others with our passports for that matter. I asked a few cops about it and they didn't have any directions. We looked around a lot, nothing. We're pretty late.
I walk towards some security guys at this exporting thingy in the middle of nowhere, hoping they'd have wise words. They go "ohhh, you're in the wrong place" (no kidding!?) and don't trust we can get instructions in Spanish or gestures, so they insist on drawing a map. We're running against time, they are taking theirs. No, sir, we don't play volleyball. No, that doesn't make me any less Brazilian (wtf!?). Yes, we have some cash. Oh, that bus, thank you! Truth is, funny guy totally saved the day, toast to sweet Chileans! He explained that passengers checked in at the other end of the port and even told the bus driver where to drop us. After struggling a bit to find our discrete destination, I don't think it took 10 minutes from seeing my brother, to checking in, to taking the bus back to where we just were so we could finally slip into the ship.
The ship, oh, the ship. One of my dreams ever since I was a kid, watching Titanic...
Cerro San Cristobal:
Couldn't leave before visiting Cerro San Cristobal, so we woke up early in the morning and got there on foot, which is perfectly doable but took a little longer than I anticipated and I wouldn't recommend if the sun is high up in the Summer sky. CSC It's a hill with a big variety of attractions: panoramic views, zoo, swimming pools, Botanic/Japanese gardens, a sanctuary, restaurants and even a museum!
No time to visit all of that, but we did buy Funicular and cable car tickets, which carry people up and down from the main entrances to the sanctuary. Funicular is ridiculously inclined, literally goes from base to the top, great view. This funicular pic taken from its own website:
From the sanctuary we took the cable car. Great view as well, although a bit too close to an oven in the Summer. Two stops: one in the heart of everything and the last one at the other base of the hill, from where we walked to the Japanese Garden, in company of some dog following us.
View from the Japanese Garden (my favorite, lovely area, very relaxing):
Obs.: unless Fer kills me, some of her pics will show up here in replacement for my lost ones *enough with the mocking... ok, Pemais?*.
Back to the hotel to get in the pick-up truck (odd!) to Valparaíso. Landscape looked like a desert, which reminds me I need to go back and visit Atacama and... every little piece of Chile =D. But yeah, Valparaíso. The first time we all saw the Pacific ocean! Wee! More than anything, what comes to mind is how Valparaíso -World Heritage nod- really has its own ID. Colorful houses crawling up the hills, tight streets with not so gentle curves. Old buildings and monuments side by side with a lot of color, chaos and poverty. Almost too much for your eye to take in and easy to link straight away with slums, but that's how the city naturally developed. Here's our B&B (the yellow one):
It had a nice terrace/restaurant with live music:
Across the street:
After lunch we rolled down the hill (or something) to the main avenue, catching a (400 bucks!) bus to Viña del Mar, hoping to exchange money in the process. That ended up consuming time, but forced us to see unlikely places in Viña, a much more sober (lol) town, with cute buildings, trees, fountains, flowers, a rather pleasant coastline and I know amazing mansions, but we didn't get to see those.
Be sure to bring an umbrella, wild sea =D.
Sunset over Valparaíso
The famous (?) Flower Clock
And then back to Valparaíso, where we went to a supermarket that had a pretty cool basket. I had never seen them, let me be a happy kid, ok? Street market, free jazz show, climbed the evil steps back to the hotel (there are elevators all across Valparaíso and yet I didn't see any :-S) and took my tripod out for a few night shots. They looked a little bit like this:
Shower and bed, with the restaurant music and probably some stupid American sitcom on TV. Oh, globalization, how I love thee.
Next day a visit to Pablo's Neruda house, La Sebastiana, quite peculiar. More walking through the hills and seeing the older part of the city, back to the hotel. Some random pics from wiki:
Boarding time! Which went smoothly. Not. So, 4 people, 3 weeks in Patagonia, loads of luggage, not enough space for everybody in one cab. After a 20 minutes walk, we get to the Customs building. The street was crowded, the ship was docked a few meters away, things looked normal... thing is, we couldn't find the check-in hall at all, or the others with our passports for that matter. I asked a few cops about it and they didn't have any directions. We looked around a lot, nothing. We're pretty late.
I walk towards some security guys at this exporting thingy in the middle of nowhere, hoping they'd have wise words. They go "ohhh, you're in the wrong place" (no kidding!?) and don't trust we can get instructions in Spanish or gestures, so they insist on drawing a map. We're running against time, they are taking theirs. No, sir, we don't play volleyball. No, that doesn't make me any less Brazilian (wtf!?). Yes, we have some cash. Oh, that bus, thank you! Truth is, funny guy totally saved the day, toast to sweet Chileans! He explained that passengers checked in at the other end of the port and even told the bus driver where to drop us. After struggling a bit to find our discrete destination, I don't think it took 10 minutes from seeing my brother, to checking in, to taking the bus back to where we just were so we could finally slip into the ship.
The ship, oh, the ship. One of my dreams ever since I was a kid, watching Titanic...