Valparaiso

(Hi! I did have time to put another one up, so here it is! I am working from not-my-computer though, so I can´t access pictures. I will get one or two up next time though.)

Next we took a bus out to Valparaiso and spent a few days there. Valparaiso is a port town about an hour and a half northwest of Santiago.

I got a vegan lunch at a falafel place, which was super awesome.

We spent some time hanging out on the beach. I suppose it probably goes without saying, but the beach was beautiful. Clear, blue sky mirroring the mingling shades of aquamarine water, sparkling in the sunlight, waves rolling in with foamy white crests and spreading themselves up the beach, reaching as high as they could go before sinking into the wet sand. The pictures just don't do it justice.

No suits with us, but that was ok because the water was too cold to go in anyway. That didn't stop the kids who were there though. They kept laughing and running in and out and in and out of the cold water. The waves were pretty high too, and unpredictable. Not dangerous, but as a kid you could get knocked over if you weren't paying attention, or if you underestimated a wave. A few of tweenage boys were playing near us, screaming and yelling whenever the cold water snuck up on them and swept high up the beach, further than they were expecting and drenching them with cold Pacific ocean. At one point they were running from a particularly strong wave, and one kid got swept right onto his butt just in front of us. He laughed it off, but he thought it was really funny how funny we thought it was. He got a huge kick out of us laughing at him, and flashed us a big, toothy white smile. We gave him a thumbs up.

One beach kid impressed us by being the youngest person with tattoos we had ever seen. We guessed that he was about 14.

After sitting on the beach a while, drying out our slightly-wet-from-wading clothes, we walked around town and saw the pretty houses. Valpo is known for its brightly colored houses; the Chileans are not shy about painting their houses any color on or off the rainbow. We got some fun photos of a few of the groups of the houses. Enough of the houses are painted to make the town look kind of artsy and bohemian. Not too many, it doesn't look like Disney designed it or anything. There are about the right number of showy houses- you know people like to do it, but there aren't so many that people feel like they are living in the Wizard of Oz or something.
We also saw lots of cool artistic graffiti in Valparaiso. We have seen plenty of graffiti throughout Chile, but the stuff in Valpo was of the highest quality.

We tried another bar recommended by the guidebook. It wasn't bad, but it smelled like a grandpa. The bar definitely had character. There were lots of photos of ships and seaport paraphernalia around, and a few regulars, solo and solemn, and sipping their drinks at the bar, watching whatever happened to be on the tv. On the whole we liked the bar, but we might have liked it more later in the evening. Apparently crooners hit this place around 10pm and it becomes more swinging during the hours later in the evening. (I guess we were early birds again.) We didn't feel like sitting around for a few hours waiting for Sinatra impersonaters though, so we grabbed a cab home.

The cab system in Chile seems to be odd. I have never heard of a cab system where you have to actually figure anything out, with a cab you just stick out your arm, an empty one stops, you get in, say where you want to go, and get dropped off. Sort of a universal system, like how red means stop and green means go. Well, in Chile the taxis are on some weird system. Only certain ones go to certain neighborhoods, and you have to stop the right one or they won't take you. In Valpo there is some sort of number code that indicates which taxis go where, but we had no idea where on earth to access that information, so we just kept (Kenneth kept) hailing them until we got one that would take us where we wanted to go. I think we got charged the "it is getting dark/you don't know the system/also you are a foreigner" rate, but whatever, it was no hardship for us and we got home safe.

People seem to share taxis here too. Strangers, I mean. They just all get into a cab together. Or a cab will have people in it, but then stop and pick up additional people too. I guess it is like hiring a little mini bus that specializes in taking you to your door. I think that cabs run specific routes or something, and if they have room you can stop them and they will take you where you want to go. Some of them appear to have information on their roofs that tell you where they go, but I have yet to see one moving slowly enough for me to read it.

The next day we hit a few of the funiculars and saw some great views of the town. We wanted to go to a museum in one of Neruda's old houses, but it was closed for "staff enrichment." Sucky, because the museum sounded sort of interesting, and it would have been a great view of the area. Neruda allegedly made it a point to always be there for new years to see the fireworks. Oh well, Chile has been a little rough for us re museums. Just doesn't want to let us see stuff. So we called it an early night, since Kenneth had a paper to write for his class anyway. I annoyed Kenneth by not writing any papers and watching Ali G (a show by the "Borat" guy) and "The Truman Show" instead.

Next: Talca!