Here you see the beautiful mix of Valpairso: sea, big city and the house-covered hills!



Alright, here is the mini tour of Valparaiso!

Wish you could actually be touring with me! (Riding one of the acensors)

First of all the main city is like any other big, busy city, with an emphasis on CHAOS! The layout of the streets isn’t as ordered as New York or Chicago, which is quite problematic for a directionally-challenged person like me trying to find her way around. But it has everything: huge apartment complexes, a big supermarket only 2 minutes from the Y, museums, government buildings, parks, restaurants, bars and clubs, and there are cars and taxis and huge buses just whizzing by every second of the day and night! But there are definitely things that make it distinct from any other big American city.

One of those things is that there are lots of little outdoor and indoor local marketplaces with vendors that sell their goods in little stalls. One of these is right next to the supermarket that I previously mentioned, and I love exploring it. Lots of stalls sell the scarves that are so popular in the U.S. and I flipped out when I did my money conversion math and realized they were selling them for only $3 each. WHAT?! They’d be $10-$20 in the U.S. I’m seriously gonna need another suitcase, this is highly problematic. They also sell jewelry,delicious pastries and candies, books, clothes, fresh juice and smoothies and tons of little touristy things. My favorite snack to buy so far is fresh fruit covered in chocolate and put on a stick, or a sopapilla, a fried little patty of sweet dough that you can put sugar or ketchup and mustard on…I prefer sugar 🙂  Besides the Americanized supermarket, there is also a HUGE outdoor market that sells all sorts of fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, freshly baked bread and other yummy things. I’ve only been able to explore it once, as it’s farther away from the Y in a kinda shady part of the city, but I want to go back, I’m craving fresh fruit and veggies! There are also venders with blankets spread out on the sidewalk in front of almost every store. It’s like the vendors in the parks in New York, but to a way higher degree, they are everywhere! Susana told me that it’s legal, but lots of the store owners hate it because the vendors sell things so cheap. I haven’t bought from any of them yet, I don’t really trust the food, but they do have some cheap touristy things! Also, the stores aren’t like the big, glossy stores on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, more like a compilation of little stores that focus in on one type of object, mixed in with little cafes, restaurants and bars.

The outdoor marketplace right by the Y, my brochera spot!

Plaza de Victoria, que hermosa no?

I love the amount of parks and plazas as well. There is a plaza right by the Y that has lots of benches and open space, but it’s all stone, so my favorite is the Plaza de Victoria a little ways from the Y. It has a gorgeous fountain, playground for kids (and for me and Erica, we like the swings ;D), benches and lots of pretty green grass, which is lovely to see in the middle of a city! My favorite part is that there is a whole section of foosball tables outdoors and little arcade games – I think parks in America should try this out!

Yeah, I live here 🙂 Simply gorgeous

Valparaíso is also an important port town. Its right on the ocean and TPS is a huge shipping company here. There is another big plaza right by one of the main docks, and it’s really cool to see the humongous ships coming in and all the tiny boats in the docks. Plus, there are tons of beautiful roads and walking paths that go right next to the sea, and humongous rocks to climb and sit on and watch the sea – it’s seriously heaven for a beach-lover like me! 🙂

And finally, the most distinct part of Valparaíso, THE HILLS! They are called “cerros” and there are 45 different ones in Valparaísom all with different names, it’s crazy! The hills are like the suburbs of the city and they are absolutely JAM-PACKED with houses! The roads are very narrow and steep, it freaks me out to see cars driving on them. But a lot of people here don’t have cars both because they are expensive and because buses are quite cheap and easy to take most anywhere. Climbing up the stairs in the cerros is not a fun time, good work-out, but I certainly prefer the “acensors”. They’re elevators built into the hills to take you up on down! Not every hill has one, I think there are only a few, but we’ve seen 3 so far. The coolest one had a big tunnel that you had to walk through to get to the acensor – it felt like a horror movie! And the view from the acensor is just breath-taking, I really wish I could capture it better with my camera. There is tons of grafitti on the walls and streets in the cerros. A lot of it is legal and done by actual artists, but some is by gangs and angsty teenagers as well :/

Oh hey dogs, you're everywhere...not a fan

One example of the 45 huge hills covered with brightly-covered casas!

My least favorite part of the city and cerros is that there are wild dogs roaming the streets EVERYWHERE! It really freaked me out at first, but if you avoid touching them, they don’t bother you at all. I just hate going around corners and almost stepping on a dog that’s fast asleep! The Chileans are so used to them that they think it’s funny how nervous I get around them, but I’m not sure I’ll ever really get used to it!

Un acensor!

But my favorite thing about the cerros would have to be the bright colors of the houses. Every possible color, in its most brilliant form possible, covers the cerros, it’s so cool! And they love to change the color of their houses as well! I was talking with Susana about this and she found it extremely odd that most houses are brick or white/beige/tan or some other pale color in the U.S. and that we don’t change the color of our houses very often. “Muy aburrido! Tu casa necesita personalidad!” (How boring, your house needs personality!) was her comment about that. And I agree! So what do you say Mom, I’m think a bright purple would be perfect for our house…..homecoming present for me?! Besos!

I love this orange house 🙂

Life is Good 🙂