Outa dodge
Before ariving in Santiago, I had a plan. And that was to find a picture depicting the mountain Aconcagua, a copy of which hangs on my parents living room wall. Now, the original version of this painting now resides in a gallery in Santiago. Or perhaps somewhere in Chilie. Thing is, I haven't a clue where, so thought (niavely) that I could spend ten days in Santiago trying to find the sucker. Well it would be something to do.
To cut a fairly uneventful story short, I haven't found it. Tsk.
The other plan was to get out of the city and find the actual mountain itself, which lies just to the East of the Chile/Argentina border, fairly close to the Argentinan city of Mendoza, which apparently holds all the permits for activities such as walking around the place and having a look at the thing.
To cut an even more uneventful story short, I didn't make it there either. Again, tsk.
Still, I did find a few pictures by the same artist hanging about (in galleries, obviously, not in gutters) and that in itself was sort of satisfying. Even if the picture that I was looking for was of a bloke sitting in front of a mountain, while the pictures I found were of great big steam ships blowing chunks out of each other. Brian Sewell eat your heart out.

What we did finally get round to doing was getting on a bus a buggering off to the nearby port town of Valparaiso, and as I write this from the bus station as we await our return limo (ahem, bus - not truck) to the capital, I can report that it was a bloody good idea to come here.
Strictly speaking we've been doing pretty similar things to our activities in Santiago, but being smaller and generally more interesting, Valparaiso has proved a fantastically relaxing place to go and spend a few days.
The town is a crumbling, slightly decaying sea port, once rich and important, now struggling slightly. The main town fronts the port with a handful of parallel streets matching the lines of the coast, the rest of the town is built on the surrounding hillsides and is a sprawl of higgledypiggledy streets lined with brightly coloured buildings. Streets themselves are by turns roads, cobbled lanes and staircases and joining them all up are assenseurs, dinky little fenicular railways, sixteen of which run up and down various cliff faces to the higher streets. Bars are perched on top of cliffs with beer on tap and views of the harbour, ships, merchant and navy chugging around doing their thing with no regard of any tourists who may be watching. In fact, if nothing else, it's nice to be somewhere just a little less touristy than Santiago.

We've been staying in a nice little hostel named El Yoyo, which we found on the Hostel World website the day before we arrived and then by pure coincidence met the woman who ran it at the bus station just as we were about to crack open the Lonely Planet to find it.
Essentially a family home with a handful of dorms attached, our own room led straight onto the lounge where the family (a large one) stayed up until about three in the morning or so chatting, watching football (Chile vs. Brazil, so perfectly forgivable) and playing with the kid, who also stayed up till then. So friendly, comfortable and likably noisy.

On our first full day in town, we walked along the coast (sadly alongside major roads rather than on beaches like in La Sienna) to the nearby beach resort of Viña Del Mar, which we reached after two hours and a half hours of walking. The beach, the last one we'll see on this trip, was quite pleasant and apparently very popular with local tourists, but not really our cup of viño. Herretically, our long hot walk almost wasn't rewarded with a nice cold beer as there were no bars at all along the beach or the nearby hotel fronts. Instead we found a slow service bar on the pier which offered a good view of the local business men as they attempted to catch a few fish during their lunch hour.
This morning, we discovered a local museum which apparently housed a picture much like the one we were looking for (same artist, same scene, perhaps a different time of day), exited that we might fulfil our halfhearted objective by accident rather than design, we set off up the cliff to find it.
Only to discover that it had been shut for renovations since 2002.
Still, there was (another) bar with a view near by, so it wasn't a coplete waste of time. Nice looking museum too, a former mansion with a Brother's Grimm edge to it. One of the windows was open, but we decided against having enough beers to make us consider breaking in, which would probably make a better story. Sorry about that.

- posted by Vince @ 1:52 PM