Valparaiso was founded in the 16th century as Santiago’s sea port. As such, it is close enough to Santiago’s airport that I reached my portside Ibis hotel by taxi in an hour. Ibis is a chain of budget hotels familiar to me from past travels. Valparaiso’s lived up to its economy standard by giving me the plainest accommodation since my poolside room in Tortuguero, Costa Rica two months before.
Valparaiso grew after Chile gained its independence in the early 19th century. Until the Panama Canal opened in 1914, it prospered richly as the principal port for the Pacific-Ocean merchant marine trade. Today, life near the city’s docks looked tame, so I had to imagine what it must have been like in its heyday, filled with sailors and dockworkers serviced by rough-and-tumble bars and a flourishing sex trade.
Valparaiso’s topography, a narrow coastal plain backed by mountainous hillsides meant that the only way for the city to grow was up. It has the quality of a vast amphitheater filled with tightly packed neighborhoods reached by acensores or funiculars, most built at the turn of the 20th century.
I sought one, called El Peral, on my first day. To reach it, I passed through the large Plaza Sotomayor with a flea market in progress.
I love a real flea market and passed some minutes taking in its offerings before walking on past the large, blue naval building named Armada de Chile.
El Peral took me up to a square named Paseo Yugoslavo on Cerro Alegre (Alegre Hill).
There, a striking building named Palacio Baburizza after its Croatian builder contains the city’s fine arts museum.
I spent a pleasant hour looking first at 19th-century work by European artists I had not known.
Another floor featured Chilean painters.
The building itself is a work of art that my guidebook claims is art deco.
Back at the hotel, I asked how to get to the district called Bella Vista that artists and writers have frequented. Reception gave me the numbers of two buses and told me where to catch them. I waited at a spot on Cochrane Street where a young couple was standing. They told me that the unmarked spot was a bus stop. I waited with them for a long time while many busses passed but not ours. Finally, the three of us went to the light-rail Metro, at a station by the port. The three of us had a long time to talk and share things about our lives. Antonia was studying some professional subject at university, and Steven was learning chemical engineering. He liked the math and science but feared having to work in a factory.
I went one stop and began to head in the direction I thought would take me up the hill to where I wanted to go. I had to ask directions of characters in the funky commercial area below the hillside.
Finally, I started walking up a street called Yerbas Buenas (Good Herbs).
At last I came to a crossroads and looking at the map, wondering where I was, a person came out of a house and showed me that I had climbed high enough. I turned a corner and started down Héctor Calvo which led me into the Museo Cielo Abierto (Open Air Museum). I was quite thirsty and found myself in front of a door to a restaurant that looked clean and inviting. I went in and ordered limonada and water. When I realized that I was in a Thai restaurant, I ordered a dish of beef in a green curry sauce with cashews. It came with a portion of jasmine rice and was delicious and filling. I wouldn’t need any dinner.
Even though used to looking at striking wall art in Istanbul and other cities, I was blown away by the extent of what I saw in Valparaiso’s Open-Air Museum.
Even the lamp posts were covered in tiles. Valpo is justly famous for its wall art.
Héctor Calvo ended in a long steep flight of steps that continued the spectacle.
Monday, March 25. After yesterday, today was a come down. There was the weather. The sun never shown, and the air was very cool. I was present to the fact that summer was over, and fall had begun. What would be my next steps? I had read good things about Isla Grande Chiloe (Chiloe Island) to the south and thought it would be fine to spend a couple days there. Wanting to use a travel agency the way I had in Santiago, I took the Metro five stops to the neighboring city of Viña del Mar where I located Tourismo Zahr and explained that I wanted the agency to buy an air ticket, find me a hotel and arrange the transfers. The process took a long time, and although I left the agency with my ticket, I had to wait until noon the following day to receive the additional vouchers.
That evening, I wanted to eat dinner at a nice restaurant. I found the name of one in my guidebook, but when I asked reception to get me a reservation, I was told it would close at 7 o’clock and that, strange as it seemed, most of city’s restaurants closed that early. The receptionist did give me the name of a good one that stayed open and was within walking distance but warned me to be sure to walk back along the busy avenue in front of the hotel. Once again, I was being warned about safety.
Gran Sazon Nazca was a large, attractive room with a balcony of additional tables. I arrived about 7 and was the only diner. By the time I left, there were several others. I took my time studying the extensive menu while sipping a signature cocktail that was too sweet for my taste. I settled on a seafood dish that included rings of squid and small shrimp around a piece of baked corvina sauced with a langoustine flavor. It was tasty enough and instead of potatoes, I chose a green salad loaded with vegetables. I drank water and a glass of white wine and finished with an expresso. I left satisfied with my meal.
On my last full day, while waiting for my travel vouchers, Kay in Istanbul and I in Valparaiso attended a funeral in Bristol, England for our friend Michael Edwards via a streaming hook-up. Although we had no ability to see close-ups of the attendees, we could hear the service perfectly well. It was a moving memorial to a dear friend.
That afternoon, I left the hotel in an Uber for La Sebastiana, one of Pablo Neruda’s three homes. The small building high up on the hillside has five small floors and is filled with a collection of furniture and objects that Neruda amassed in his lifetime. The house looks pretty much the way it did when the poet lived and entertained there. With an audio guide keyed to the different floors, I was very impressed with what I saw and heard. I had not known much about Neruda and had not read his work. Later, back at the hotel, I went online to learn about his life and art. He was a remarkable man, regarded as Latin America’s greatest poet. During his middle years, he was a political figure, as well, and served as consul to Spain and as Chile’s ambassador to France . He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
Outside the house, a terrace gave wide views across the city, showing just how large it is.
To end my visit, I took my camera and walked past the port entrance from where I could clearly watch the activity. I saw one container ship being unloaded and a smaller ship with its own cranes loading something else. Large trucks waited to be loaded with containers.
I elected to eat dinner at the hotel and ordered a pizza that I guessed might not be very good. I was not disappointed. For the rest of the evening, I packed and got ready to leave early in the morning.
March 27. It was still dark when I arrived at Santiago Airport after one-and-a-quarter-hours in a taxi. Since I had checked in online, I bypassed the long queue and deposited my case quickly. After the security check, I found the Pacific Club Lounge and ate some of the breakfast offerings. I was very early and sat for a long-time reading news features and pages of my current book, Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time.
The airport on Chiloe Island is tiny. Our big plane landed, disgorging a crowd of people. I retrieved my case and found a driver holding a card with my name misspelled.
He drove me twenty minutes to the Hotel Diego De Almagro far enough outside the city of Castro that I needed a taxi to go in. It was a pretty hotel with a clean, modern design, but it was isolated.
I went into Castro by taxi and found Tourism Queilen where a man named Cristen sold me a spot on a tour for the next day. Later, he wrote, saying the guide who spoke English wouldn’t be available and that the tour would only be in Spanish. Feeling disappointed, I bowed out. I had wanted to take the tour because it would visit some of the wooden churches, the island is known for.
Back at the hotel, I walked out with my camera to a place along the busy highway where I had seen houses built on stilts called palafitos. Many were built in the 19th century when most Chiloe Islanders made their living by fishing. Their colorful houses built on pillars allowed the fishermen to live on the water’s edge and attach their boats to their homes. The palafitos are a fine sight at high tide when their colors are reflected in the water.
Walking back to the hotel on a road parallel to the highway, I passed a long row of odd houses that looked as though they had been built by their owners without any kind of building code.
I napped before dinner that was an unsatisfying bowl of chicken soup served by a poorly trained waitress. With no car and nowhere else nearby to eat, I was stuck with what the hotel provided in a restaurant where no one spoke English. A disappointing situation!
Disappointment followed me in town the next day, too. There was a tourist office that kept erratic hours and when open, was staffed by a woman with no English.
The one bright spot in the city center was the Iglesia San Francisco de Castro, whose large Romanesque basilica was done entirely in wood and beautifully crafted.
Its arches, columns, even its groined vaults were wooden. I stood amazed.
On that second day, Thursday, March 28, I began to see that southern Chile seemed to lack a robust tourist infrastructure, and I was about to learn that it was a mistake to come to Chiloe Island without a plan to leave it. For a moment, I thought I might rent a car and tour the island. But I decided instead to cut my loses and go further south to Torres del Paine in southern Patagonia.
On the internet, I signed up for what was billed as a four-day tour that began Saturday, meaning that I would have to leave the island and get to the city of Punta Arenas by the next day. In town, I found this to be impossible. I could not fly there directly, and the Cruz del Sur bus line didn’t go there. I felt trapped with no one who spoke English to talk to. I thought maybe if I went to the airport, I could get help.
I took a taxi twenty minutes to the tiny airport terminal and entering saw no one. My heart sank. Then, a woman dressed as a security officer appeared from behind a door Lo and behold, Pilar spoke some English and, learning my problem, said I could get to Puerto Natales where the tour company was based, if I drove to Puerto Montt and took a plane. She said there was a taxi service that could drive me for the sum of $150. I agreed. All I needed to do was book a flight from Puerto Montt and find a hotel in Puerto Natales for a night until the tour left on Saturday.
Back at the hotel, I asked Samuel at reception to help me. He was the only one who spoke some English. It was a good time of day because there was no one else that needed his attention. It took time, but he found me a seat on a Sky flight that left Puerto Montt at 2 in the afternoon. It took longer to secure a hotel, but by late afternoon I had a room in Puerto Natales. I had trouble finishing a form for the tour because it wouldn’t let me enter the name of the hotel where I would be picked up. I wrote emails asking for help that finally came. It was all very mysterious.
March 29. So glad to be leaving Chiloe Island where I wish I had not come. As it is, I saw hardly any of it. What a waste of money! Pilar and her husband arrived at 9 as arranged. His name was Edwardo, and I believe he was her second husband since she had a nine-year-old son by another father. Edwardo spoke no English, and Pilar’s was pretty sketchy. She had attended a university and studied translation but worked in security at the Castro Airport.
Our drive to Puerto Montt went well enough. I sat in front with her husband while Pilar talked to me from the back seat, asking questions about our lives in Istanbul.
To leave the island and reach the mainland, we took a car ferry for half an hour. We arrived at the airport at 11:30 in plenty of time for me to check in and say goodbye to my new friends.
The flight to Puerto Natales lasted two hours. Walking across the tarmac from the plane to the terminal, there was a stiff wind, and it was very cold. Before even checking in, I asked my driver to take me to a store where I bought a warm coat, as well as a pair of long underwear. With the hat and scarf I had packed I would probably be all right.
The Hotel Weskar was right on the water. I felt like I might have been somewhere in Western Ontario in the winter except for the snow-capped mountains rising in the distance. The success of my upcoming adventure would depend a lot on the weather.