Valparaiso, Chile.

Valparaíso, Chile is a very dramatic city consisting of 45 hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It has streets and stairways that wind up and down throughout the city with an occasional funicular if you don’t feel like walking. It’s a bohemian culture and it’s been described as “a wonderful mess”.
It was deemed a World Heritage Site in 2003 due in part to it’s role in early trade and globalization
and the culture that developed from it. Until the Panama Canal was completed in 1914, every ship going from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean or opposite, stopped in the major seaport of Valparaíso before or after the sailed around Cape Horn at the tip of South America. Because of this exposure to many people from many different countries, Valparaíso was heavily influenced in the arts, architecture and poetry/writing.
Today Valparaíso is known for it’s street art and dilapidatedly beautiful structures. ( I may have made that word up.) It is absolutely loaded with colors, textures, history, and smells (both good and horribly bad). Oh, and dogs. As I mentioned before in another part of Chile, there are dogs everywhere that seem to belong to everyone.
You literally have to step over sleeping dogs to get around. Sometimes they join you as you walk, but mostly they are just asleep.
Mostly recently, Valparaíso has been in the news for protests against oppression. The political system has deteriorated here and the lowest income people have been hit hard with high cost living and transportation against their low wages.
This past October saw riots here along with a couple of other cities in Chile, but that’s a whole other story.Read more