Day 36: Valparaiso, Chile

This is our last stop on the continent of South America, and was scheduled for 2 days. We had planned to visit Santiago on the first day, and had purchased Flix bus tickets and the hop on & off bus tickets. When we planned out departure, we were still at see near the port. We ended up docking and departing 7 hours later than expected, so had to scuttle the whole day trip. Some of the folks did a rushed tour and had an ok time, but when we finally debarked, it was close to 4 in the afternoon, so we decided to do a walk from the port. Well, let’s just say that we didn’t luck into a good experience on this day. We ended up in a really sketchy place, with homeless folks, burned out buildings and IV drug use. Most of our small group ( that would be everyone except me) voted to hit the eject button and grab a cab back to the port.

We retreated back to the Shangrila of unlimited food, beer and pool-time under a port freight crane. Being docked in the freight port was fascinating! Chile is a big exporter of fruit and wine, to name a few, and the port was busy loading freight. I saw the biggest forklift I’ve ever seen, lifting a zircon container from a stack of 5! Seeing this kind of commerce up close really underscores the scale of global trade to me.

Valparaiso is an old city built on the hills. It was the primary trade port before the Panama Canal was built, and became somewhat of a ghost town after it opened. There is a lot of housing supply and it is pretty affordable now. There are now a lot of artists who live here and there is amazing street art everywhere.

Our city tour took us to Viña Del Mar which is where the vineyards used to be. Now it is full of high-rise condos. Not sure if I’d want to live in one of these considering that this area has recorded the largest measured earthquake in the history of the world! 9.6 on the richter scale if memory serves correctly.

It was a pretty large port city, and I regret missing Santiago and the wine region.