Sixteen hours travel – give or take – took us from the Humboldt penguins to the cultural heart of Chile, Valparaiso. Known as Valpo to its inhabitants, the port city was for a time the home of Pablo Neruda, one of Chile’s greatest poets. It is a quirky place, combining dockside grit with urban escapism, all in a picture postcard perfect setting.
We rolled in to town early in the morning, fresh as daisies after another oh-so-wonderful all night bus trip. As we wandered bleary-eyed through the streets, Valpo woke up around us. Empty streets filled with vendors, then workers, and then shoppers; the pre-dawn peace gave way to the noise and colour and bustle in the streets near the water’s edge.
Higher up in the city — much of Valpo is set in the hills overlooking the ocean, with funicular elevators moving commuters and tourists alike up and down the steep slopes — the morning calm persisted longer, the sleepy streets still quite in the mid-morning light.
We spent much of our first day just wandering the streets, first in search of accommodation, and later in search of Valpo’s vaunted colour and atmosphere. I’m happy to report that we found both.
That afternoon we headed up to Pablo Neruda’s house, which offered an interesting perspective on both the man and the city. It seems he was a land-loving sailor at heart, and built the house with a distinctly nautical theme.
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