Valparaiso

I think I mentioned that Santiago was relatively clean, modern city that is somewhat unremarkable. Well Valparaiso the port town adjacent to Santiago is just the opposite - a bustling and shabby port town with a lot of character. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there on the last day of my trip.

The town has a flat business section near the ocean (El Plan) and then a hillside section consisting of a jumble of old houses of all shapes and sizes and colors overlooking the bay. The hillsides are quite steep and the roads are narrow and sinuous. To facilitate getting up and down the hills there are some 15 or so funicular railways (ascensores) around the town. These are all very old and dilapidated pieces of equipment indeed and they look like they would never pass any modern safety standards. Nevertheless, they work and they are a lot of fun.

Looking downhill from Ascensor Florida.

One of the things I did in Valparaiso was to visit Pablo Neruda's house there. Mr. Neruda, the Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate, while very much a supporter of the socialist movement and the poor and downtrodden of this world also lived a fairly comfortable life and had three houses in Chile - all of which are now museums. He was a great collector and the house in Valparaiso was full of interesting stuff that he had been given or that he had collected in his travels. I enjoyed it so much that when I got back to Santiago later that afternoon, I went to his house there to see what he had accumulated there. An interesting character indeed.


Neruda's House in Valparaiso - La Sebastiana (he named his houses)