I ♥ Valparaíso
I've quite enjoyed Chile overall, but this afternoon is the first time I've had a sense of wanting to come back some day. Valparaíso is the reason.
Lonely Planet says that some people don't 'get' Valparaíso, because there isn't really a lot to do other than wander through the streets and photograph or paint interestingly-coloured buildings. That appealed to me, though-I've always enjoyed cityscape walking-so I thought it would be worth the trip. I was right. Valparaíso has instantly joined the ranks of San Francisco for cities I most enjoy walking around.
I'm hard-pressed to find adjectives for the place; I don't want to describe it as something it's not. 'Fascinating'? Well, I thought it was, but I concur with LP that many people wouldn't see what all the fuss is about. 'Beautiful'? Well, in a rustic sort of way... it's certainly not a clean city, especially not the day after excessive New Year revelry! 'Artistic'? My bloody word it is, at least in some neighbourhoods. But even the particularly run-down parts have a character worth experiencing.
Okay, how about this? If you're familiar with San Francisco, imagine somebody taking a scoop of the Lower Haight and another of the Mission, mixing with Bernal Heights while preserving that neighbourhood's terrain, and letting twenty or thirty years go by without doing any real maintenance. Sydneysiders might be able to imagine a place that's a mix of Newtown and Marrickville, but with Latino culture and smeared over a series of steep hills, and again the decades without maintenance. It's definitely a somewhat improverished place, almost a shantytown, but with colour and a sprinkling of small restaurants and hostels that could've come directly from Berkeley or Fitzroy.
It's a bit like San Francisco or Melbourne in the way that there are a bunch of unique little neighbourhoods; each hill has its own feel. The most Bohemian is Cerro Concepción, where I had the most satisfying meal I've had since I arrived in this country. Santiago has its fair share of vegetarian restaurants, but all the ones I've tried have been closed for the New Year holidays. Pretty much all of Santiago was closed today, actually, but Valparaíso is alive and wide-open.
I walked through one or two vaguely well-to-do neighbourhoods, like Cerro Alegre, which felt vaguely like 24th and Mission. On the other end of the scale was the area between Cerro Panteón and Cerro Belavista, which made the Bayview district look pristine, but wasn't at all an area I regret seeing. It's also where I had what I'll call my first Race Around The World moment.
Race Around The World was a mid-1990s series on the ABC. Budding journo wannabees from all over Australia submitted self-made documentaries, and the ten finalists were given a camera, an unlimited travel budget, and instructions to make ten documentaries from ten different countries, two from each continent excluding Australia and Antartica. It was absolutely the best television series I've ever seen-the stuff these kids were sending back was incredible. They covered everything from third-world war-recovering countries to the Southern Californian porn industry, each with a unique perspective. It's also where John Safran made his name-who can forget him placing a note about footy results in the Wailing Wall and then doing a streak in Jerusalem?
The thing that struck me the most, however, was that these people would end up in the homes of people in countries I knew very little about. Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Greenland, Thailand, and probably Chile as well. I always wondered how they´d end up so close to complete strangers with strange customs, and how that felt for all involved. Today I found out.
I have a weakness for urban stairways, and following one lead me to that shithole neighbourhood I was telling you about. It was an area of terminally buckled pathways, sagging fences and stray animals, but it had some pretty impressive views. A group of people waved at me, and beckoned me up a rickety ladder.
I felt rather put on the spot. Was this more of the overwhelming friendliness that Chile has demonstrated, or a setup for one of those Valparaísian robberies that my guidebook warned me about? They were thirty-something, curly-headed men, smiling and waving their arms about. I consulted my gut feeling, which was still ringing from the solar plexus experience I had last night, and like so many other times on this trip, I thought what the hell.
It turned out to be a good old New Years Day backyard barbecue, just like the ones that many of my Aussie friends no doubt had today. There were about 20 people, men and women, mostly in their 30s. They had a shade structure that looked like something somebody bought at Target and left at Burning Man five years straight, and their house was practically propped up by a couple of 2×4s. The ground was covered by something that, once upon a time, somebody might have tried to make into a lawn. But there were some snags and slabs of steak on the barbie, plenty of beer, and those views I just mentioned... great stuff!
I never felt quite entirely at ease (the apparent lack of sense of personal space in Chilean culture didn´t help) but I don't think there was any real reason to worry. I suppose the thing that I most fear about such a situation is causing offence by refusing food, but it actually wasn't a problem-I guess I eventually pronounced 'soy vegtariano' well enough for them to get the idea. Explaining that I'd had quite enough beer the night before and therefore wasn't in the mood for more took a bit more patience, but one of the women eventually offered me some fizzy pineapple stuff, which hit the spot perfectly. Other than that, it was half an hour of the kind of broken English and even more broken Spanish conversations I've become accustomed to: I'm Australian (which always prompts much kangaroo hopping-I joined in this time, to everyone's amusement), I'm visiting friends in Argentina so I decided to see what Chile's like as well, so far I've only visited Iquique and Santiago, yes, it's a very short trip, oh, he's gay? that's nice (okay, that one was an unexpected twist in run-down machismo suburbia) and yes, I'm travelling alone.
That last point always raises some eyebrows. When I've travelled through Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, I've often run into people travelling by themselves, particularly men; they make friends easily at hostels and hang out with fellow travellers from around the world. But here everyone's been very clearly travelling in groups, mostly pairs: lots of couples, a few groups of mates, and a couple of siblings. The only exception was the Pom I met last night, and he was here on business. I must say, I haven't gotten as much of a kick out of travelling alone this time as on previous trips, and when I do come back, I'd really love to have a few people I know along. I fantasise about coming to Valparaísio for some future New Year with a couple of friends or a couple of lovers or a lover and another couple or something. It would be a blast.
Valparaísio has one thing that I haven't seen anywhere else: ascensores. They're brightly-coloured, windowed boxes large enough to carry four or five people that sit on rails that go up hills at about a 60° angle. They're always in pairs: when one goes up, the other comes down as a counterweight. All the ones I went on cost 100 pesos, about 20c. They save many minutes of steep, windy uphill walking, and I'm surprised nobody's thought of installing any in San Francisco. I have friends who don't cope will with the City's hills, and these would be the ideal solution. (I´ll upload many more photos once I can connect my laptop directly to the ´net again, which I hopefully will at paisleychick´s tomorrow.)
I basically took an afternoon to walk across town, and I caught a micro (small Chilean bus) back to the coach terminal. Two guys got on with a guitar and a clarinet and serenaded us for the trip, the way buskers do on the metro in Paris. (I haven't been confusing Valparaísio with Paris like Santiago; its character is too unique). The music they played sounded exactly like one of my favourite bands, Bedridden. I tipped them well.
I almost had another transport snafu at the coach terminal. I thought I could just get on any coach to Santiago, but the driver sent me to the counter, and they said that the next one with seats available wasn't until 12:20am. Shit. There were a few other coach companies to choose from, though, so I thought I'd try my luck with the one next door. Five minutes later I was in my preferred seat (the very front) of a coach bound for Santiago. I don't know what happened with the other company. I actually got on at the suburban terminal recommended by Lonely Planet; maybe if my ticket had taken me all the way into the City I wouldn't've had to come up with money for a new ticket. But if so, this is just an example of the cost of not speaking the language very well. It's a cost I accept-as karenbynight would call it, 'life tax'.
So right now I'm headed back on the 68 tollway. We're barely a third of the way through the 100km trip and it's been stop-and-go all the way, like highway 17 through the Santa Cruz mountains on a sunny Sunday evening, or Sydney's F3 on pretty much any weekend. The scenery is a lot like taking US-101 south from San José and heading for Monterey: a semi-rural drive flanked by eucalyptus and slightly arid hills, and the occasional business along the side, even though it's supposed to be a freeway. But there are vineyards, too, and despite the 120km/h limit, groups of people wander along the shoulder mere centimetres from the flow of traffic. We've passed at least 20 hitchhikers, a couple of snogging couples, and even a couple of chooks, all in the emergency lane. The drive includes two tunnels, one of which is several kilometres long. And we've just come to a toll plaza, which looks like the one adjacent to the Bay Bridge during morning peak, or the Sydney Harbour Bridge back when you could still pay for that in cash. The only difference is that the enqueued traffic is mixed with people selling snacks and cold drinks, and there are no metering lights-they could use them, though.