Valparaiso

We decided to stay a couple extra nights in Santiago mainly due to the rain stopping us from doing a couple of the things we wanted to do. One of those things was a day trip to Valparaiso (or Valpo as the locals call it), a town which was around two hours by coach and had another free walking tour. It's often nice to do the earlier tour to give you ideas on things to do so we aimed to hit the 10am tour.

We set our alarms super early and crept out as quietly as we could, hitting breakfast shortly after it opened (7am) and were on our way via the subway to the bus station. We bought our tickets and boarded the bus leaving at 8.05 which in theory (the bus taking 1hr 30) should have given us plenty of time. If there's one thing you should NEVER take as golden it's bus duration!! We're not entirely sure why the bus took so long as we were both snoring shortly after departure but when we woke up pulling into the station it was 9.57am. Now if previous tours and GPS were anything to go by this tour wouldn't start until at least 10.10am and it was not going to take 34 minutes to walk there. So we did what any other ambitious Brits would do and headed for the meeting point.

As we got closer to the centre we could hear a racket echoing through the streets. This racket turned out to be hundreds of school kids in various marching bands, marching through the streets. Because of this various roads were closed to cars so trying to dodge the crowds of parents following their less than talented kids meant we inevitably missed the 10am tour. We later learnt that they were practicing for a big celebration which involved the Navy the following weekend. Valpo has a large port so this is apparently a pretty big deal!

As the walking tour was going to line up the activities for the rest of the day I hadn't really bothered to research anything else to do around Valpo so Blake suggested we do what any good tourist should do and headed to the nearest Starbucks for coffee and wifi. The coffee you get for breakfast in the hostels is pretty terrible so having a Starbucks was a rare treat!! Unfortunately the Starbucks was in a square which was the central meeting point for these marching bands. They entered on one side, did a few laps then left on the opposite side. Luckily by that point it was the adults walking through so at least everything was in time but still enough to give you a headache.

We had our coffee and logged onto the wifi and decided we'd walk up into the hillside and explore the colourful town that was Valparaiso. Almost every other building has a mural of some sort painted on it and those buildings that didn't were often painted a bright colour. We slowly headed towards a look out nearer the top of the hill which gave us an incredible view. A little further on and we arrived at Pablo Neruda's Valpo house (the poet who's house we looked around in Santiago). On the way back down the hill we decided to stop on a little square to make some sandwiches. Cream cheese in brown rolls topped up with spicy beef crisps were today's filling of choice!

After a slow walk down the hill it was almost time to join the tour so we just waited around by the meeting point. The marching bands were still playing at this point, 5 hours after we arrived! Our tour guide Jorge arrived and took us up again into the hillside, this time venturing to the opposite side with more viewpoints and murals. At the beginning of the tour we got to a point where there was a giant slide / slider for the Bristolians. We joked saying we wanted to go down it but then it actually became part of the tour and the whole group went down. The bottom of the slide was in a small square where 4 or more dogs recognised our guide. I think Jorge was the pied piper of dogs as these four legged friends stayed with us for the whole 4 hour tour.

When passing some of the murals we learnt that there were 3 occasions when one could be painted. The first being your house, your walls. The second for buildings not belonging to you, then permission from the owner was needed. And the third was for city owned buildings, for these you needed to submit a sketch along with a proposal explaining the story behind it. Because of this, many of the murals tell stories of Chilean history and its people. There was a fourth, but this involved the middle of the night with dark clothes and a pair of good shoes in case you have to run!

Towards the end of the tour we stopped at an empanada shop. These from what were described were no normal empanadas either. We had a menu of 80 fillings to choose from and each was individually handmade to order before being deep fried (normal ones are baked like pasties). They were DELICIOUS!! I went for chorizo, onion, tomato and cheese and Blake opted for cheese, spinach, nuts and cream.

After the tour finished we were all walked out so we headed back to the bus station and made our way back to the hostel for some well needed feet up time! I can tell you that the marching bands were also still going at this point.Read more