One of the things I’ve confirmed on this trip is that I love the aesthetic of hills rising up in cities, covered in uneven piles of houses, offering a beautiful upward view from below and an even better outward view from on top. Having the houses pop with a full rainbow of bright colors, distributed randomly across the whole spectrum, just enhances the experience, and so it was fairly predictable that I would love Valparaiso. Valparaiso is tucked in between the aforementioned hills, or cerros, and the ocean, and rose to prominence as one of the most important pacific ports in…. some previous century. Maybe the 19th? Whatever… The point is, Valparaiso had a massive boom as one of the wealthiest and most important cities in South America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (I’m pretty sure) before its glory faded with the opening of the Panama canal and the accompanying redirection of shipping traffic (fact-check anyone? I’m writing this with no internet connection and I’m damn sure not gonna go back and research it later. I feel like I maybe read this story of Valparaiso’s development at its art museum? Either way, it sounds plausible). Then, in the past, I don’t know, 20 or 30 years perhaps, Valparaiso has seen a renaissance as a bohemian haven and artist’s gathering place. It still has a massive (and apparently somewhat dangerous) port, but the hills that rise up away from the ocean are blanketed in brightly colored houses and the entire city is covered in graffiti and beautiful murals, easily the most street art I’ve ever seen, and tourism has become a huge industry.

I knew I was going to like Valparaiso before stepping off the bus, having been captivated by the hills and ocean while the bus rolled through town into the station. I had sent a couple of couchsurfing messages the night before hoping to find a place to stay but didn’t get any replies (I know, way to plan ahead Phil, a whole 12 hours in advance) and so I whipped out my phone at the bus station to find somewhere to stay. Picking hostels from online listings is pretty much a crap shoot, just like anything else on the internet that you evaluate based on reviews: you can nail down the location, and then everything beyond that is to be interpreted based on people’s personal neuroses and the randomness of their experiences. This time, though, I got some great luck. My hostel was up on one of the trendy touristy hills, Cerro Alegre, near lots of delicious restaurants, an all-day breakfast place (desayuno integral: fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee or tea of your choice, delicious multigrain bread with butter and incredible homemade apricot jam, and then a big bowl of fresh fruit with oats and yogurt. I got it… more than once), and plenty of murals and craft stores. Sergio answered the door, and I later found out he was one of 3 brothers who owned and ran the hostel together. He was extremely friendly and laid back, and I immediately felt more genuinely welcome than I had at any point in Santiago (disclaimer: I didn’t love Santiago). I didn’t really have much of an agenda for Valparaiso – my understanding was that it was mostly a town to either wander around and look at murals or go to the beach, and since the weather wasn’t very conducive to the latter I really only planned on the former. Accordingly, I was, to no one’s surprise, extremely lazy. I pretty much just spent 5 days lazing around, sleeping in, wandering around staring at murals, watching soccer, chatting with Liv, eating good food, and generally just getting re-acclimated to traveling.

There were a couple of specific things I did aside from wandering the streets, the first of which completely by accident. On my first day I was strolling around and passed by the cultural center, where I saw tons of people sitting around and enjoying the afternoon. I went in to stroll around and discovered that, along with just enjoying the green space, people were there for a Lambe Lambe festival. Lambe Lambe (as I learned that afternoon) is basically mini-box theater: the presenters make a stage in a small, enclosed box, and then put on a puppet show while you watch through a small peephole and listen to accompanying music or dialog on headphones. The boxes are also decorated on the outside and most of the presenters were wearing costumes to go along with the themes of their performances (think “The Voyage”, “A Message”, “Undersea”, etc…) so it was a vibrant scene. There were 35 presenters, from Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Mexico, and each of them had at least 5 people waiting to see their show. I got there late so I only had time to see one, a delightful little tale of a woman turtle thinking of her beloved, traveling to France, getting in a plane crash on the way back, and then ultimately being reunited with and consoled by him. The synopsis doesn’t do it justice – it’s really about the music and the adorable puppets.

Other activities were the art museum, housed in a giant palace on a hill, whose beautiful wood and marble turned out to be the main attractions in my opinion, and La Sebastiana, one of the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s three houses that are now conserved as museums. Neruda certainly had an eclectic decorative sense and his houses are fun to walk around. He also loved the ocean so his house featured tons of windows with breathtaking views out to sea, so that’s nice. I did end up connecting with one of the people I messaged on couchsurfing, Will. He unfortunately couldn’t host me but he graciously found some time in his busy schedule (he’s wrapping up his PhD in neuroscience) for a coffee and a chat, which was fun and interesting. Otherwise I spent a fair amount of time hanging out with Sergio and the other people at the hostel and generally just relaxing. I finally got myself together enough to sign up for a volunteer exchange site, HelpX, and spent some time looking for opportunities to volunteer in something more meaningful than working the front desk at a hostel. I found several promising programs in Peru and Bolivia and sent messages out so I’m hoping to have a volunteer project nailed down in the next week or so, where I’ll ideally spend 4-5 weeks in May and early June teaching English and/or working with kids. In the meantime I’m heading up to San Pedro de Atacama, the jumping off point for most of the most famous activities in the Atacama desert, and then am planning on crossing into Bolivia after, headed for Uyuni and the famous salt flats. At this very moment I’m 12 hours into a bus ride to Copiapo, which sits about halfway between Valparaiso and San Pedro de Atacama, and where I’m planning to spend the night tonight before hopping back on a bus for another 12-13 hours tomorrow to get to San Pedro. Chile, it turns out, is really extraordinarily long. I had actually booked a flight from Santiago to San Pedro to save myself the trouble of the bus but the workers are on strike so all flights on Sky, the cheap domestic airline, are canceled until further notice. You do, in fact, lose some. The drive today has been nice though, passing through the cute palm trees and tiled roofs of Coquimbo and La Serena, along miles and miles of dramatic, untouched coastline, and up through some decently high mountain passes. I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep and am excited to get settled in San Pedro tomorrow night. I’ll be back soon with an update from the driest desert in the world!

Awww grandma

This is what Liv is afraid I will do to her heart.

Rainbow houses!

Lambe Lambe

If you look closely you can see the decorations on the boxes

Truly delicious ceviche

I made a kitty friend!

The flowers match the house

Pablo Neruda had a pretty sweet view from his bedroom…

This image does not properly convey how gigantic this mound of every type of seafood was