Valpo!

Hello! Here I am, posing with Ruth's umbrella (more on Ruth in another post. She deserves a whole one to herself) in front of the bus which is taking us to Valparaíso, a port town to the north of Santiago. Buses are a key mode of transport in South America, and they're actually quite luxurious! More legroom than an airplane, more convenient than trekking to the airport, and some of them sport seats that recline all the way into beds!! After flying to Chile with Iberia, this bus was positively sumptuous! The journey to Valpo was less than 2 hours, and we had no real plans for the day apart from general exploratory wanderings. As luck would have it, we fell into the trap of asking a tour guide for a map, and were promptly sold a day on a tour bus, which drove through Valpo as well as nearby Viña del Mar and Reñaca, which are beach towns.

The tour guides swapped in and out throughout the day, but our first one took us up a cerro to see the view of Viña's beautiful beaches, pumping 'Smack my Bitch Up' (sorry Mum, but it's true!) out of the bus speakers. We visited a shop where lapis lazuli is sold at double the going price, half-justified by the fact that the semi-precious stone is only found in Chile and Afghanistan (and I know where I'd rather visit at the moment...). Sadly, I hadn't brought my millions with me that day, so we left empty-handed and continued to Reñaca to feast on Peruvian-style seafood and Pisco sours, as well as the interestingly luminous Inca Kola (below).

We got a bit distracted after lunch, as the beach looked like this:

!!!!!!!

When we finally got back on the tourbus 10 minutes late (which, frankly, is early for Chileans, but our fellow tourists were Brazilian...), they gave us a round of applause. Oops!

There were a few stalls outside Pablo Neruda's house, La Sebastiana in Valparaíso, and one of them was selling these enormous rabbitskin slippers with sheepskin linings. I would have been tempted had they not still smelled of cuddly bunnies...
The day was rounded off with a browse round the markets, where I very nearly bought various knitted goods made from alpaca and llama wool. Nearly, but not quite.


In fact, that's a small fib: The day was actually rounded off with us getting on the wrong bus back to Santiago, and accordingly chucked off of it. All great fun :)
I'll be back with stories from La Vega soon!


La Entusiasta
xxx