On Saturday, we arrived on the coast at Valparaiso, which is a stunningly beautiful port. Normally we would have opted for a quaint B&B or a small boutique hotel, but Valpo (as the Porteños call it) was built on a series of cliffs and hills so steep that they had to construct funicular elevators (ascensores) in the 19th century to get up and down easily.
Or at least for the rich English bankers and Chilean guano barons to get up and down easily. For the rest, it is a city of thousands of stairways, millions of steps, and a people whose thighs can crack walnuts.
Because of my back, we decided to rent an apartment in a modern high rise next to the sea on the small ribbon of flat land. The view of the bay and the city is magnificent. Each night, we sit out on the veranda with a glass of good Chilean wine and watch the sunset.
The lights of anchored fishing boats and small freighters reflect across the still waters of the bay, as the orange street lights come on, outlining the shapes of the hills. You can hear the sounds of the gulls bickering in the warm end of summer night. And yes, I do want to rub in the part about the warm evenings for all of you still locked in winter and snow.
Then the disco starts up and you decide to stab and mutilate any and all conga drums and electric guitars. It is, I firmly believe, only a misdemeanor to kill a disco musician, just to put him or her out of their misery.
In the morning the spell breaks, and you discover that Valpo is indeed part of the third world. Actually, I should correct that, as every working port that I have been in is part of this world: one rich in grime, the smells of urine, and litter old enough to vote. Women of easy virtue and Humphrey Bogart in a trench coat are expected at any moment.
We went up to see the murals of the Open Air Museum today. The murals are on both sides of a steep hill, one side of which can only be accessed by the stairs. As my Swedish Veloped does not do hills, I stood on top and watched Toni scurry around taking photos. While the murals done by famous artists are ok, those of the street artists continue to have more power and more imagination. I will add a small gallery of some of the street murals.
While I was waiting for Toni, I struck up a conversation with Kent, an American who used to live in Corrales, New Mexico and has been in Valparaiso for about 10 years now. He was in the process of moving materials down a barranca (ravine) to build a deck for his daughter, who owns one of the houses filling and overfilling the wash.
We started talking about housing materials. The houses in this area all appear to have been built with corrugated tin, but when you touch them, you realize that no metal was hurt in construction. Kent said that the siding was made out of a cement infused cardboard, which made things much easier for burglars as they didn’t have to break down the door, but could just walk through the house wall.
Valpo is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, because of its beauty and unique architecture. Like most 
people, I thought that the UNESCO recognition was a good thing, in that it stopped developers from destroying the history and the charm of a city. Kent said that most residents 
of Valpo’s historic center didn’t agree, as the UNESCO restrictions prohibited them from fixing up their very poorly constructed homes. They had to wait until their homes either fell down or burned down. And strangely, the money that UNESCO gave the local government to help preserve the city had never trickled down to the residents.
We also went to see Valpo’s Neruda House La Sebastiana. Actually, there are three Neruda houses, one in Santiago, one here, and one in Isla Negra. I think that they are starting up a franchise. Be the first to have a Neruda house in your city.
The Valpo house was extremely nice, as Neruda was a collector of many types of art from old maps, 
Japanese silk screens, a carousel horse from Paris, paintings from friends, a collection of his old pipes, a Ethiopian painting which depicts the story of Sheba. It was, in short, filled with everything you wanted to steal and hang in your own home.
It is what the house of a poet of the imagination should be. It was filled with tourists from around the world and from Chile as well. On the 
streets around the Neruda house, each house had a ceramic tile with the poems of poets from around the world. Unfortunately, this type of veneration of a poet does not happen in the United States.
Health does seem to be a major concern in Chile. We see a lot of people jogging and riding bicycles (something that you can do here because the drivers are not as crazy as in Mexico). Fat people (other than myself) seem to be an anomaly as well. Indeed, there are a high percentage of people who look like they spend a substantial part of their lives getting “buff,” which is a term that I have heard about but am not sure if I know what it actually means.
It used to be that fat people were an anomaly in Mexico as well, but when we went back to Michoacán several years ago, I was surprised by see so many people who were fat. They were also taller, which is indicative of a better diet with more protein and calcium. Unfortunately, they are also following some of the worst practices of the US as well, and I will have a supersized coke with that.
I am very impressed with the politeness and kindness of the Chileans. All Latins whom I have met are very polite, but the Chileans seem particularly helpful, warm and friendly. I should have predicted this from our friend Manuel Machuca, who hails from Chile, but I simply ascribed it to good parenting. While I am sure that good parenting still played an important role, I can also see the Chilean values in his behavior.
Well, tomorrow we are off to sail around the Horn. Given the exorbitant rates that ships charge for Internet, I will be in contact intermittently depending on what type of internet we find in the ports.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION ON AIRBNB. This trip we are testing out airbnb, which is an online service which rents houses, apartments, and rooms. In the last couple of years we have been renting houses along the Northern California coast through VRBO (Vacation Rentals By Owner) as a good way to get our friends and family together. We have found that these vacation rentals vary from just what you see in the photographs to places that are far better than they appear in photos.
This pattern seems to hold for airbnb as well. Our first rental in Santiago was exactly like it was pictured, assuming that you had a very wide angle lens. It had a great location and a motley collection of silverware, plates and glasses. It was obvious that the apartment had never been set up as a home, only as a way station for passing strangers. Given the size of the bed, the passing strangers had to be very friendly.
The apartment in Valparaiso, on the other hand, has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, a well furnished living room, a well-equipped kitchen and a desk for writing. It is one of the places which are far better than the photos. There are of course minor faults, such as the bed slat that falls out in the middle of the night and the fact that none of the apartments have coffee machines or any way of making coffee beyond instant. I hate to say it, but Chile is a country of tea drinkers. Oh, the shame of it all.
The nice thing about airbnb for us is that we are able to rent nice apartments for less than $50 a night in both Chile and Argentina. We much prefer having our own kitchen and being able to eat breakfasts and evening meals at our own place. We always go out to a nice restaurant for the big meal of the day, which in Latin America is comida, which is served in around 2 pm. It is much healthier for us.
Neruda’s house sounds wonderful! And, again, the wall or house art looks really interesting. Good for airbnb! XX