Valparaiso and Santiago

To try and catch up: We spent two and a half days in Valparaiso, a bustling old port city that grows uphill from the water in a colorful patchwork of houses, restaurants and shops, all stacked precipitously to overlook the freighters that chug back and forth in the bay. Chile´s bohemian enclave, it´s full of steep, winding alleys with messages like ¨Smash your TV; live your life¨ scrawled across the steps, and bright graffiti murals adorn many of the buildings.

Getting off the bus just before sunup, we tried in vain to nap in some chairs in the terminal, then decided that the city was probably awake enough that we ought to give up and start our day as well. We took a long walk across the city in search of an internet cafe that didn´t exist (the first time our Lonely Planet bible has let us down so far), but eventually found another one and managed to book the next 2 nights in a nice little hostel a few blocks up the hill from the main thoroughfares.

The hostel, ¨El Yoyo,¨ was full of friendly people and stocked with the most recent seasons of Family Guy on DVD, so when trying to decipher Spanish got too taxing (explains Taylor), we kicked back and indulged in some familiar laughs. The Yoyo was right up the hill from a crowded open-air market where we bought veggies to cook up, and we ventured down to the port to buy fresh shrimp as well. At first we couldn´t find the fish market, until a security guard answered our question by taking us through a back room and out into an alleyway, warning us in spanish to watch our belongings - he then kindly stayed and watched the whole time as we looked over the fresh catches and bought our camarones.

Other highlights from Valpo include trudging way up to the heights of the city to find one of Pablo Neruda´s houses, which is now a little museum with a view of the bay, and then grabbing lunch at a classy little restaurant on a tiny, romantic balcony overlooking most of the city. We also walked down to the pier, where amid several ¨No Fishing¨ signs, locals were lined up with hooks and spools of line, pulling in fish hand over hand almost as fast as they could get their lines in the water. From there we also saw the resident colony of sea lions basking on a buoy.

As for Santiago, we had a great first experience with couch surfing. Our hosts, Jaime and his partner Pablo, were always gracious and fun to chat with. Saturday night (Valentine´s Day) we cooked dinner for them, shared some wine and fell asleep watching Saturday Night Live, which in Chile is just now catching up to election time, though alas, it wasn´t one of the episodes with Tina Fey doing her Palin impression. For a city of 6 million in South America, Santiago seemed comparatively clean (well, in only smelled of sewage sometimes), and it was easy to find our way around. We were excited to find sushi for the first time since leaving the States. We saw a couple of museums, including one dedicated to pre-Colombian Latin America, which had mummies way older than their Egyptian counterparts and a really cool exhibit on ancient fishermen who speared whales from sealskin catarafts. We also climbed up to Cerro Santa Lucia, a rocky hill in the middle of town, adorned with staircases and fountains, that afforded a nice 360-degree view, despite the smog obscuring Santiago´s mountainous surroundings. After a two and a half days in the city, we were ready to strap on our packs, get out into the backcountry and get some good excercise. Be careful what you wish for...