Vacations - more or less relaxing

Enjoying the first holiday lunch with Inés

Our vacations brought us to Valparaiso, the only really interesting and fascinating city in Chile. It is located around a big bay on the shores of the Pacific Ocean west of Santiago. It has a very unique flair being a mixture of almost everything you can imagine. It is a port town and the headquarter of the Chilean navy and that for crowded by marines in their nice uniforms as well as sailors, whores, drinkers and all that kind of people related to any big harbour of the world. As well it is inhabited by lots of artists and students who give it a bohemian touch. And of course it is full of tourists. The town consists of two totally different parts. There is the flat bay itself, containing the Chilean parliament, office buildings, huge colonial houses, the port, bars, restaurants, cinemas and all the urban infrastructure. With the centuries the city spread over the surrounding hills, climbing them with weirdly meandering steep roads and even steeper, adventerous elevators – so called ‘ascensores’. Up on the hills there exists another town. Constructed following the natural shape not two houses are alike. They are painted in any imaginable colour and you find huge mansions next to dangerously looking barracks. On the hills you find lots of art cafés, international restaurants, art shops, galleries, lovely hostels and various museums. Artists are offering their work and handicrafts on any corner and time does not seem to exist there. The whole town itself, especially up on the hills is a huge piece of art. On every single house, in every back alley or staircase you find paintings and graffitis. Some of them pure scribblings others great pieces of art.

Valparaiso is not truely a beatiful town. It is shabby, dirty and stinks but the flair it gets for its wide range of inhabitants and its unique landscape makes it really fascinating. According to that it reminds me a little of Venice. You just have the hills in spite of the channels.

We arrived and took a room in a central hostel in the plane which I knew from my first visit here. We walked around the city and the hills, eating and drinking in fine cafés and restaurants, watching arts and handicrafts, climbing the hills with some of the ‘ascensores’ or by steep labyrinthine staircases, just soaking up the spirit of the town. In the night we hardly found sleep because the alarm of a car just outside our window rang every 30 minutes and one floor above us anyone walked around and moved chairs loudly half of the night. Meanwhile on the other end of the Pacific Ocean the major earthquake in Japan took place. Soon after we had woken up we realised that there was a tsunami warning for the whole Chilean coast. Inés got really nervous and hardly could enjoy the day but nevertheless we discovered the city another time. We followed the medias during the day and when they informed that the tsunami had hit the Easter Island (belonging to Chile) with waves of about 1 ½ m we decided to return to our hostel to prepare ourselves to leave. When we came there, the owner informed us that there is an evacuation going on and until early night everybody has to leave the bay. So we packed our things and searched for a hostel up on the hills which was not that easy because those are the classic tourist places and due to the tsunami alert everybody who did not leave town was searching shelter there as well. Finally we found a nice hostel where we even spent a quiet night this time. To relax from the stress of the evacuation we had an awesome dinner in a French restaurant just next door (ostrich tenderloin with couscous and cremé brulée as dessert).

During the night the tsunami went by without causing any problems (although in other regions of the coast a few minor destructions had been reported). On the next day we went to Isla Negra a small village where you can visit the house of Pablo Neruda, Chile’s most famous poet and Nobel Prize winner which nowadays is a museum dedicated to him and his collecting passion. When we came there, they told us you just can visit the house with previous registration (which was not mentioned on the homepage that I had watched before) but finally after some discussion they let us join an English tour. That was a little disappointing because we had been guided through like cattle in a market and you did not feel that much of of Pablo Neruda's extravagance nor got any deeper insight in his interesting life.

Our plan had been to spend the next days on some beach but unfortunately a chilly strong wind had come up and did not seem to leave soon, so we changed plans. The next day we went to a small town called Curíco where we hoped to relax from the tsunami evacuation and all the rest and to visit a nearby national park in the Andean foothills and one of the numerous vineries in the region. We got there and did not find any proper hostel. They all had been either horribly dirty and run-down or damned expensive despite the town itself does not has to offer anything. Finally we took the best room we had found to spend the night although it was still very basic and anything else than inviting. The next day we went to the closeby village of Molina where there should leave buses to the national park. Unfortunately this service had already been suspended due to the end of the summer season. Very frustrated, because nothing seemed to happen well these days we did not try to go to a vinery anymore but took the next bus back to Pucon because we said that we are having chaos in our own house there as well, but at least no costs when we stay there. On the way back to Pucón it started raining heavily.....

So far the story of our only more or less relaxing and a little disappointing holidays. At least Inés and I have had a few days away from Pucón where we had stuck the last months due to the high season and some hours together only the two of us, which let us make some decisions and plans for the future. More about that the next time.