Back in the 1800s Valparaiso was the leading merchant port on the shipping routes along Cape Horn and Pacific Ocean. If not THE most important city, foreign merchants and capital made it Chile's financial powerhouse back in the day. Disaster struck in 1906 when earthquakes destroyed most of the city. A few years later the Panama Canal opened, leaving Valparaiso as nothing but an expensive and exotic detour. Walking around downtown you can see buildings where construction started before the canal was opened and then just stopped, leaving everything unfinished.
As with La Paz the city is built on a hill. Houses are scattered on top of eachother, climbing steep hills up to the mountain top. One thing "Valpo" has that La Paz doesn't is the "ascencores" - elevators! The first one was built as far back as 1883 and used to run on steam. Now they are all operated on electricity but still fully functional. There are 15 of them in total spread around the city and believe me, after walking the streets and stairs for a while you'll understand why they were built.
We decided to go for one of the "Free" city walks (tour-for-tips) in Valparaiso. We met up at one of the plazas near the harbor and was greeted by screaming gay guide, Austin who wore a "Find Waldo" t-shirt for the occation. The tour started at the pier where we were shown how the shoreline used to be several hundred meters further inland - just like my home town Arendal before the channels were filled! From the pier it was also possible to rent one of many small boats if you fancy a little harbor cruise. I liked how owners not only named the boats after their wives and/or girlfriends, but that they also put "I love" in front of their name, expressing their feelings to the world:
Austin took us back and forth, up and down, and really gave us the grande tour of downtown Valpo. It is amazing with the street art that's everywhere in this city. Even the different steps of long staircases have paintings drawn on them. Food is good everywhere and priced quite reasonabely. We even managaed to find a pizzeria that showed english football, so I got to see Chelsea wipe the floor with West Ham Live! ..
After completing the city walk we decided to go visit Pablo Neruda's old house, La Sebastiana. I have never read any of his poems so to me he is somewhat unknown - but his house on top of the Bellavista hills was simply an amazing spot for taking photos of the Valparaiso harbour. I'm glad I had the wide angle lens on my camera this day as I got several really beautiful shots!
Lars decided to hit the sack early, and me and Chris rounded the day off with some Sushi at a local restaurant. This will be the last time ever I eat sushi on this continent. For some reason they use cream cheese as a compliment to rice on almost anything you order from the menu - making each bite quite the mouthfull. I was completely disgusted after eating a roll of 8 but they kept on coming. If you're into sushi - make sure you order sashimi or spesifically tell the cook NO CHEESE.
In 2003 Valparaiso was declared the cultural capital of Chile. Later UNESCO also gave it a World Heritage status, prompting the tourism to soar. I will probably never return to the status it once had as a financial powerhouse, but tourism is definitely putting Valparaiso back on the map. If you ever fly to Santiago I would strongly recommend leaving the place (like we did) and take the 2 hour bus-ride to Valparaiso. Much nicer city to walk around, much prettier, lots of culture and great food.
Speaking of food; Catering for european tourists they might want to tell the owners of this chain of fast food restaurants to change their logo. It would not pass in Norway and probably run into trouble in most other european countries as well. I must admit though, it made me laugh.:-)
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