And so it begins! Western Canada was a wonderful way to start, but it really felt like a vacation with us trying to see lots of things. As we arrived in Chile, our pace intentionally adjusted. Settling into a single location for a week and adjusting to new culture and language meant that most days we were dealing with “normal” life in the mornings (home schooling, grocery shopping, laundry) and then taking the afternoons to explore our little area in Valparaiso.
Our first day was a bit challenging. We were all tired from our multi-day flights from Vancouver so were extremely thankful that one of Julia’s World Vision Youth Ambassador friends from Chile had a friend who could pick us up from airport and get us to Valparaiso. It was lightly raining when we left Santiago airport and it started to get really foggy as we got closer to Valparaiso. I’m pretty sure if we had rented a car and tried to drive it we would have been hopelessly lost. We quickly learned that having friends, friends of friends, and cousins of friends who know the area is absolutely wonderful and a huge blessing.
Of course it really started to rain after we got checked into our AirBnB and needed to get groceries. So our first experience was in a downpour of rain trying to find our way around while jumping over the rivers of water created by the Valparaiso hills. Needless to say, we all got a bit wet, but as we got past that day, the clouds cleared and we could get a real sense of where we were, Valparaiso grew on us and we loved our time there.
We did know that we were coming to Chile during their winter, but knowing and experiencing are two different things! Chile is chilly this time of year! When we arrived, the AirBnB was set to 7 degrees Celsius, so we all had to bundle up, even inside. Since it doesn’t often get below zero, and most of the year it is warmer, most homes don’t have central heating and only have some electric heaters in different rooms. We are used to cold being from Canada, but its a bit different in that you can always go inside to warm up. Here, if the sun is shining you warm up and the inside will warm up, but when the sun isn’t out or when the sun sets, it is chilly, inside and out.
One of Annika’s friends thought it would be funny if Annika could get a picture of her eating chili in Chile. Evidently chili isn’t a thing in Chile as we couldn’t find any cans of chili at the grocery store so we had to make our own. We decided we would eat our hot chili out on the terrace overlooking the city so that we could say we had chili in chilly Chile.
The normal things of life, just not always in a normal setting: home schooling, online schooling, and laundry – local style.
In addition to exploring Valparaiso ourselves, we also benefited from a walking tour provided by the cousin of Julia’s friend. We learned a lot about this wonderful city. Valparaiso is a city that is trying to restore itself. The city really sprang out of the California gold rush, as the way for Europeans to reach California was by sea and Valparaiso was the first major port after coming around Cape Horn. Valparaiso grew into one of the richest ports during this time and some of the travelers opted to stay. Therefore, American, British, German and of course Spanish cultures shaped the architecture of this city of hills making it a unique blend. However, when the Panama canal opened in 1914, the need for Valparaiso as an international port ceased to exist and the city started to decline.
The rebound was triggered in part with the Historic Quarter of Valparaiso being declared a UNESCO heritage site due to its unique architecture and the many ascensors (funiculars) that allowed people to more easily get up and down all the hills. In addition, a sort of collaboration between building owners and street artists started to blossom and street art and murals started covering up the graffiti. This is still an active and ongoing part of Valparaiso and it is world-renowned for its many colourful buildings and murals.
Typical streets and paintings.
There are about 45 hills that surround the lower, man-made flat area of Valparaiso. This is one of the steeper hills we got to climb regularly, which goes up part of “Cerro Alegre”. In English, that translates to “Happy Hill”, which is why there is the mural with “We are not Hippies, we are Happies”.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, there were 30 ascensores (funiculars) in Valparaiso. Today there are only 16 left and of those, only about 7 are operational. This one is Ascensor El Peral and still had the original steel turnstile with “Manchester” stamped in the middle of it.
On our walking tour we learned how important the navy is to Chile given how much coastline they have. This is one of the navy buildings and a memorial to sailors lost in sea. We are also surprised to see what looked like a shipping boat with a Canadian flag painted on it.
We went up the Ascensor El Peral and down this Ascensor, the Reina Victoria. They had excellent hot chocolate at the bottom!
A short walk from the bottom of Ascensor Reina Victoria was Beethoven Street running along the next hill, Cerro Concepción. Here though, rather than an ascensor, there was a a set of stairs. However, since this is Valparaiso, it isn’t just a set of normal stairs, but painted of course! This one was called Escalera Piano and appropriately painted to reflect the street it started from. There were many other painted stairways but this was our favourite.
Right by the Piano Stairs was what ended up being our favourite cafe: MariaMaria. We had a few recommendations from friends of friends and this one definitely hit the mark for us. Another favourite was this little hole in the wall where we noticed a few locals every time we walked by. We tried two of their empanadas and they were the best we had. It was so small, you couldn’t even enter but had to order from the door, but it tasted like someone’s grandma was back there making everything from scratch and stuffing as much goodness in as possible.
Towards the end of our stay, we braved the metro to get out to the fisherman’s market where there were supposedly sea lions. We weren’t able to find them at first, but after wandering though the front of the market and then right through fisherman repairing nets we got to the end where they were actually filleting the fish and there we found pelicans and the sea lions.
From the fish market we braved a bus up to Pablo Neruda’s house which is now a museum. He was a Nobel winner in poetry but had a very checkered life and having been told that there wasn’t much to see inside other than a bed and living area, we opted not to pay the $7 per person and instead to view the house from outside. We ended up finding a nice little café just down the hill that had a great view of the house and the valley below.
Part of what made the week enjoyable was seeing the girls explore their surroundings. We walked past this painted sidewalk with hop-scotch and other activities on it almost every day, and it only took one or two times before Annika started hopping and skipping as we came and went. Another fun story is that the girls kept on seeing these white painted ants on various sidewalks and wondered what they were. We asked our walking tour guide (cousin of a friend!) and he smiled and said, “I’ll show you!”. Toward the end of our tour he started pointing them out and if you followed them they lead to a candy store where they made their own hard candy, which were very good!
Lastly, we know a lot of people are wondering about Julia’s ankle and have lifted her up in prayer for which we are grateful. Overall it hasn’t effected her mobility too much though going down hill is hardest. It is definitely black and blue in many places (even close to the top of her toes?!?), but she continues to improve a little each day even though she was experiencing more discomfort this week than the week it actually happened. We take it day by day.