The protests in Chile had us changing our itinerary to avoid the major cities, but after arriving it appeared that they have mostly calmed down to peaceful protests. So we added Valparaíso back in and I am really glad we did.
We stayed up in the Cerror Concepcin neighbourhood, I say up because it is located on the top of a hill a bit back from the coast. Most of Valparaíso is quite hilly, which can make walking around quite tough. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but I was recovering from a leg injury. Me and my friend Chris had gotten into some shenanigans in Amsterdam, so I was limping around with what felt like a permanent charley horse. But tackling the hills each day was totally worthwhile, as this neighbourhood is a nice mix of old architecture, beautiful street art , a solid restaurant scene, and a bohemian atmosphere.
And Valparaíso is littered with elevators all over the city, Concepcion itself had 3 different elevators going down in different directions, which helped getting up and down each day. The elevators themselves are a sight to see, nearing antiques in their age, they have the functional style of something built in the 50s. Their movements also matched their age, with jerks and bumps that didn’t leave us feeling 100% safe. But a ride up or down was just 100 pesos, so we took them a lot.
The neighbourhood was also full of guesthouses which offered private rooms for a good price. Ours was Casa de las Flores, it was an old building converted over, must have been beautiful in its heyday, but was showing signs of its age. But the rooms were big with high ceilings and the shared kitchen and outdoor balcony made our stay very comfortable, I would go back.
The street art in Valparaíso is beautiful, worth the detour alone. I am not talking about someone tagging “Mouw Rulz” in a sloppy freehand, but full on murals covering the majority of building walls. The Concepcion neighborhood is most known for it, but I saw beautiful pieces all over the city. Here are some of my favorites.
We spent our time wandering the streets, just getting a feel for Chilean city life. The fish market was cool to see, and the seafood empanadas with cheese were unique. Checking out the local produce markets is always a stop of mine, and Valparaíso’s markets didn’t disappoint, clearly still utilitarian versus some other cities that have been converted more into tourist attractions. The metro also helped us to get around the city, a quite modern line running along the coast, each trip was just a few hundred pesos and we could share a rechargeable card, so a very convenient option.
We also spent one day next door at the beaches of Viña del Mar, an easy metro ride away. Here again we saw the stark difference between the rich and the rest. Where Valparaíso was clearly a working man’s town, and a bit rough around the edges, Viña del Mar was the modern beach resort. The beach was nice, but surrounded by tall apartment blocks and chain restaurants, you could find a similar resort in hundreds of places around the world. It really lacked the feel of a Chilean city. So while many would stay in Viña del Mar and take day trips into Valparaíso, we were very happy to do the reverse.
We did have some run ins with the protests. One night we had planned to go to a restaurant in a neighbourhood next door. Walking down the street, we suddenly see people covering their mouth and hurrying in the opposite direction. We saw up ahead some smoke hanging in the air and some people with gas masks, we or course turned around and looked for a way around the protests. Given the hills, it turns out there was no route around to our restaurant so we decided to go somewhere else and headed back up to Cerro Concepción. The next night we went to the restaurant from the previous night, but on the return journey suddenly our eyes started to burn a bit. Again on the same corner were protests, our burning eyes were the result of tear gas. Luckily there was a side road that cut across back towards our guesthouse, so we quickly passed through there. We could see the protesters again with gas masks, some armored police and lots of smoke in the air. They had started some fires in the street to block traffic and were causing a general ruckus, but did not appear to be very violent. So we never felt very unsafe, we did get our first light taste of tear gas, I captured this quick photo.
Speaking with our guesthouse owner later were learned it was against the college entrance exams taking place that week. The school system is set up in a way that makes it very hard for children of poor families to get into college. Pass rates are very low for public school attendants, while semi-private pass more often, and fully private, self payed school attendants pass even more frequently. This essentially means that people are unlikely to change their social standing from generation to generation, especially keeping the poor people down. This made me realise that the whole charter school debate currently happening in the US will likely lead to a similar inequality problem in the US, so while I was fairly ambivalent about this issue in the past, going forward I will be staunchly against it.
Despite the protests, we were very happy to have spent some time in Valparaíso,it was a beautiful city, and it was our one period of seeing big city life in Chile. I totally recommend you to spend some time here yourself.
