I can confirm that these things are all you need to survive in Valparaiso for at least 1 day and night. I can confirm it because that's all I had this weekend. So here's the story:
My friends--Nate, Monica, Emma, and Emily--and I had decided to go to Valparaiso from Saturday morning until Sunday morning, but we really wanted to work under a tight budget since it was going to be such a short trip. To save money, we decided to avoid booking a hostel and to see where the night would take us instead. So that was the plan.
Saturday started out on an odd note. We all agreed to meet at a certain Metro stop with a bus terminal attached at 10:45. Nate, who is normally my trusty companion on adventures, went the wrong direction on the Metro...for a half hour. After much chastising of Nate, we found a bus and set out for the coast.
Once we arrived, we immediately set out a plan. Nate has a great guide book with plenty of cool little secrets that most tourists don't know about. First, we went to a plaza with an antiques market with all kinds of Chilean knick-knacks. Some of our purchases: a rusty flask, some "artistic" photographs from the 70s (more like soft-core porn), torn Pablo Neruda books, and some really cool photos from the 1920s and 30s. I'm happy to say that I only contributed the last addition. My friends are weird...
So we trekked onwards. We had heard and read about a place where one of the greatest Chilean dishes was invented. Allow me to introduce you to the chorrillana: a BIG plate of fries topped with caramelized onions mixed with a little bit of scrambled eggs and a medley of beef pieces and sausage. It sounds odd, but trust me, it's worth the risk of early death by heart attack. We had to walk down this sketchy alley to find the place, so you could say it added to the ambiance.
Valparaiso is famous for its hills. Chileans describe the city as an amphitheater because the hills rise up around the bay in a semi-circle. It makes for great pictures and even better exercise to work off the deadly amount of calories in a chorrillana. We headed up Cerro Alegre (Happy Hill) to find some really cool British-influenced houses and Chilean artisans. On top, we stopped for pictures and met some very nice girls from London. As you will later learn, Valparaiso is also a college town in addition to a port town. Adding sailors to a college town just makes for some shenanigans. However, the city is very picturesque from the top of the hills--brightly colored houses are scattered throughout the city with the big blue bay below. (I'll just add some of my favorite pictures to the bottom of this post.)
The next few hours weren't very interesting to be honest. We took a nervous ride on an "ascensor"--think a vertical railway--to go down the hill. They've worked for decades, but it doesn't mean they're structurally sound. We went up another hill, took some pictures, and got coffee. Then, the fun began.
To save money, we decided to make our own drinks. We poured pisco into some coke bottles and set off. Legal? No. Efficient? Definitely. We ran off to get dinner and set out to see the night life of Valparaiso. After two bars, we decided it was time to go to the famous club "Huevo." It's five stories of different rooms all playing different kinds of music, ranging from rock to 80s to salsa and everything in between. It was 1:00 am when we arrived at the club. It was 5:00 am when we left. Most of the crowd spilled over into a neighboring park, so we talked with some Chileans until 6. At that point, we headed back to the bus stop and caught the 6:30 bus back to Santiago.
By 9:00, I was home and in bed until 3:00 pm when Monica woke me up to work on a presentation we had to give the next day. Such is life.
It may not sound that attractive, but I highly recommend Valparaiso. It combines just about all of the aspects of Chilean life and culture and is a beautiful city on top of that. I hope you enjoy hearing about my shenanigans, even if their legality is questionable. I'm usually a very well-behaved exchange student!
Until next time...chao.
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