Valparaiso: a trip to the sea

First, an apology. I am doing so much that I am falling way behind in my posts. I will eventually catch up...hopefully before I get back to Perth! A big thank you to all of you who are reading and commenting. Please don't forget to tell me what you want to see.

Day 20: Wednesday 20 February 2008. I woke up feeling dreadful. My head was killing me and I was supertired after coughing and sneezing all night. Still, I looked forward to my next adventure in the port city of Valparaiso.

First, we had to wait for Marcia, Aurora's friend, to finish her meetings in Santiago as we were staying in Marcia's family unit in Valparaiso. Marcia is the grand-daughter of former Chilean leader Salvador Allende. Aurora and Marcia have been friends for many years and met in Mexico [I believe this was while Allende's family were in exile after his death - Aurora will correct me on this, I am sure].

When we arrived at Marcia's house to pick her up, Aurora gave me a brief tour of the bottom floor that was both a shrine and a museum. I was humbled. I did not expect a visit to a friend to be a voyage through modern history.

On the drive to Valparaiso, it seemed that Chilean drivers could be as crazy as Parisians! Drivers are meant to overtake on the left and move to the right to let people through.

Something else I found interesting about the roads was the tolls, which you have to pay one every newish road in Chile. All infrastructure, including roads, has been privately-built & owned from Pinochet's time in power. In fact, thanks to his water-tight constitutional changes, the Chilean Government can not invest in its own infrastructure. To encourage foreign investment, Pinochet also implemented lax tax laws, which now renders the Government unable to collect tax from multinationals that have set up major Chilean projects and employ cheap local labour (BHP Billiton is a case in point here). It sounds awfully like Western exploitation to me - except that it's not limited to the West. Even China have started to get in on the action. [Luke tells me that Chinese language schools are growing in popularity in South America, particularly throughout Brazil.]

The journey through the hills was beautiful and very different. Suggestive billboards greeted us on both sides [this carried through to the port city itself. There were also no men in the billboard ads!], and native palm trees sprouted awkwardly between shrubs and araucaria (pine-tree relatives, also native). The sky clouded over as we headed into Valparaiso, heralding the cooler weather by the sea, but they soon cleared into a wonderful day.

Marcia's unit was modest and fashionably decorated. The interior was very Mexican and Aurora noted that most items had been brought across from Mexico. A photograph of friends and political allies Neruda and Allende took pride of place in the entry way. We brought two boxes of Marcia's books from Santiago for display at the unit: these were mostly gifts to the Allendes, many of them from presidents and other dignitaries.

Valparaiso is not a clean city. Aside from watching out for cracks in the pavement, we were constantly on the lookout for animal waste. Stray dogs and cats roam the streets and shops, surprisingly passing each other without incident. [For me, that disproved the age-old belief that cats and dogs are natural enemies.]

As we wandered the streets in search of lunch, we passed a number of impressive murals and creative graffiti and I realised that we had stumbled onto the Museo a Cielo Abierto which spans most of the city. Adding to the flamboyance was the fact that most of the houses were block-coloured brightly in rainbow shades and everything in between. I was excited to find a number of pink houses. [Apparently the Chilean Government subsidises house paint purchases and actively encourages the bright colours!]

Aurora and Marcia came out with some Chilean metaphors and similes that I found amusing. For example, if you are attracted to someone, then they "smell as good as fresh bread" and if you "look as fresh as lettuce", then you have woken up looking pretty darned good.

Our 4pm lunch at the Gato Tuerto ("the one-eyed cat") was reasonably priced and the service was great. Despite the kitsch decor (plastic placemats) and small servings, it was well worth the visit for the 270-degree view.

We continued our route through the open-air gallery, where we:

• Took a funicular (on an angle of 48-degrees!) down one of the hills. That was fun - many of these near-vertical trains are 100+ years old;
  
• Walked past the Casa Mirador de Lukas, a memorial to Renzo Pecchenino ("Lukas"), the Chilean cartoonist and satirist.

We freshened up at Marcia's [following a near-death experience courtesy of a local taxi driver] before heading out to dinner at 10pm. By now, we were all pretty starving and I was so stuffed up with head cold that I just wanted something quick and easy [and sleep!]. Instead, we were treated by Marcia to an impromptu tour of Valparaiso.

Valparaiso is pure magic at night. The lights flicker like candles at a large-scale shrine to the sea.

It was after 11pm when we arrived at the pizza place - after 1am by the time we arrived back at the unit. Here I tasted palmitos for the first time and ate pizza sprinkled liberally with smoked chilli powder. I was sated.

The highlight of the night was the lunar eclipse that started with Marcia's tour. By the time our pizzas arrived, the moon was fully covered by the earth´s shadow. I can't remember ever having seen a full lunar eclipse before then.

Day 21: Thursday 21 February 2008. Still feeling like death warmed up, Luke and I set off to forage for breakfast provisions. The strays from the day before now travelled together in car-chasing packs. It was funny to watch, not so funny for the drivers with their snapped-at wheels. Here, the dogs have real character; they wait for the people to start moving before they cross a road, sleep in the middle of a footpath, wander in and out of shops.

Breakfast was simple: bananas, avocado, tomato, cheese, fresh bread. The fresh fruit and vegetables in Chile have so much flavour.

While Marcia waited for friends of her mother's to arrive, Aurora, Luke and I headed to Pablo Neruda's house, La Sebastiana. As we walked, we continued to find more murals, graffiti, colours. The cloudy day made the colours more vivid. I was so excited to be able to see this city evolve in different lights and times of day.

A joint Neruda-Picasso exhibition, hosted between the house and cafe, marked the time that the two men had spent together creatively. I started to realise the connections between places in my journey thus far.

Entry to the house itself was 2,500 Chilean pesos. The house was only part-owned by Neruda, who was able to convince some of his friends to buy into the dwelling. There are mozaics inside and out of the house, on walls and floors; in polygons of tile, stone, mirror. Wood features. Contrasting textures, patterns. Stained glass windows. This is a house of many colours.

Aurora pointed out that the high emotion of Neruda's love poems were based more on control ('you are changed because I love you') than acceptance ('I love you because of who you are'). He seemed suddenly egocentric to me, the way he embraced the lustful blindness of love, his ability to transform others. He was also incredibly eccentric.

Only Neruda was ever allowed behind his bar. Adorning the house are gifts, pieces purchased at auction, rescued and restored items. There is a convex mirror in the bathroom by the bar. In the living room, Neruda placed a portrait of a young man wearing a ruff opposite a portrait of the Queen of Spain, also in a ruff, "so the Queen would not be lonely." Neruda's love of the sea is apparent in the numerous porthole windows, the study that sounded like a storm at sea on windy nights.

I didn't realise just how deeply-rooted Neruda's involvement in politics stemmed before seeing this house; he saw politics and poetry as being inextricably intertwined. I wondered also if he was a religious person [and I haven't yet looked into this]; he placed contrasting religious symbols side by side.

In case you couldn't tell, I really liked La Sebastiana.

Marcia, her mother's three friends (political journalists) and their driver ended up at La Sebastiana at the same time as us. I discovered the true true collectivist nature of Latin Americans as we all set off to find a restaurant together. Eventually, we happened upon a seafood place that really loved its oil. I could barely touch a thing but the view over the port was amazing. I thought it was very sweet of the journalists to buy us lunch; we undertook to pay for dessert. [I then found out that it is customary for the oldest member of the group to pay for meals, after some cursory banter.]

Another funicular ride later, and we were off to find a suitable cafe.

Again, Cafe Turri had a fabulous view but was otherwise nothing to write home about [and, yet, here I am doing exactly that!]. We met Marcia's mum, the Socialist Deputy, who greeted us very graciously and joined our party for tea.

I saw a couple of firsts at Cafe Turri: my first Chilean flies (you just don't see insects!], and my first bumblebees! I could not believe the size of these bees.

'The kids' picked up the 28,000 Ch peso tab, which I think was altogether too much for too-small desserts (my celestial pancakes would not have satisfied a grasshopper) and average service. It was on its way to 8pm by the time we left the cafe.

More quirks of Valaparaiso:

• criss-crossed power lines. It's worse than Paris;
  
• the coloured houses built precariously into and over the hills, on less-than-vertical stilts;
  
• the cobbled streets. They are everywhere;
  
• the winding roads with super-tight corners;
  
• the decimal point instead of a comma and comma instead of a decimal point (eg. 1,000.00 is written 1.000,00). I was weirded out by this; and
  
• The strange yet oddly interesting busker who walks a collection of wire-based animals around a ring of spectators.

We headed back to Santiago late, just in time to see the full moon rise over the hills like the sun.