Santiago & Valparaíso

After an overnight bus trip of 11 hours we arrived in Santiago. The city has a great metro system so we hopped on the train and made our way to our hostel.

Our hostel was based in an area of the city called Providencia, which was very upmarket with tree lined streets and an abundence of cafes, bars and resturants. When we arrived at the hostel it was approximately 8am and the hostel were kind enough to let us have breakfast , so we chowed down on some bread, jam and half decent coffee while we planned our next few days.

We decided that we would take in easy during our first couple of days in the city and basically just wonder the streets getting to know the different areas, see the main sights and take in a couple of the best museums. The highlights of the sights were the Jardín Japonés, which is a beautifully landscaped garden in the middle of the city, featuring, as the name suggests, many plants and trees from Japan surrounded by fountains and pools and a huge man-made waterfall in the middle of the park. Above the waterfall a mock fort has been constructed, which you can climb via a staircase to it's summit at 630m. Upon reaching the top you are treated to some amazing views out over the Santiago skyline and the snowcapped Andes that meet the Eastern borders of the city.

Plaza de Armas is the main square within Santiago and surrounding it you can find the cities main architectual wonders. The Catedral Metropolitana, the main post office and the Muséo Histórico National are all very beautiful.

Just around the corner from the Plaza de Armas is the Santiago fish market, where we decided to go for a spot of lunch. The intense smell of fish and shell fish hits you as soon as you go through the doors, and that coupled with a huge amount of hurried locals, crazily energetic fishmongers loudly trying to sell their produce, and a tout outside every restuarant trying to pull you in for some food, resulted in a very manic but truly enjoyable experience. We eventually found a cozy little resturant within the market and had an amazing lunch of garlic prawns and fresh salmon.

During conversations with a number of people we had repeatedly been recommended a visit to the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino. The museum was pretty small but the exibits were fantastic. The museum focused on tribal relics used throughout Chile and various other South American countries before the invasion and colonisation of European folk.


On our third day in Santiago it was time for the inevitable to occur - a visit to the local wineries! The majority of the wineries around Santiago are pretty spaced out so it's difficult to see more than one in a day, therefore we chose to go to the biggest and make a day of it. Concha y Toro is Chile's biggest wine producer. I'm sure most of you back home have heard of them, as they export the majority of wine from Chile to the UK. Upon arrival at the vineyard we upgraded to the cheese and wine tour.


The vineyard tour was good but very touristy and were accompanied by a very large tour group. It was all a bit too cheesy (bum bum) for us and we just wanted to get away and drink the wine and eat the cheese. We had a couple of glasses during the tour and then made our way to the bar where we would get another couple of glasses as part of our deal. We were not dissapointed by the cheeseboard, which, among others, had brié and a beautiful cheese laced with rosemary (which Mel is still talking about now!).

We opted for another glass of wine and then the waitress generously gave each of us a glass of dessert wine also. Needless to say we were a little weary, all the wine and cheese coupled with the outside temprature of 35 degrees took its toll, and on the train back into the city we both fell asleep. We were woken up by a lady when the train reached the end of the line, luckily this was our stop!

Deciding that we had not consumed enough alcohol that day we visited a famous bar in Santiago that served a drink called a Terramoto. This was a pint glass filled with a concoction of white wine, a spirit of some description and pineapple icecream. I know it sounds hideous, but once the icecream melts it's pretty drinkable. The smoke-filled bar was great though, filled with lots of loud, dancing and drunk locals (at 5pm in the afternoon!), and colourful musicians wandering around adding to the atmosphere. Eventually we finished our drinks and staggered back to the hostel.

The following day we departed Santiago for a few days to visit a costal town called Valparaíso. The 1.5 hour journey to "Valpo" went very quickly and before we knew it we were on foot towards our hostel.

Valpo is a town that may guidebooks descride as a place you will either love or hate, we happened to love it. It is considered the cultural capital of Chile and entire town is a Unesco World heritage site. The town it basically made up of two parts, it's port and congested centre known as El Plan, and it's residential sector that spreads up the hills behind it, which is dissorganised and random but filled with stunning and decrepid houses of every colour, and walls covered with the most amazing street art you'll ever see. Valpo is a city that you walk for hours on end, exploring all the little alleyways and steep staircases that wind their way inbetween the houses and up and down the hillside. I would describe it as the Venice of South America, minus the canals. The town also has a system of randomly positioned funicular carts that carry people up and down the hillside. Most of these are decades old and a ride in them is quite an experience!

We met some great people at our hostel in Valpo, and as our stay fell upon a Saturday night we decided that it would be nice to have a good night out. In true South American style we didn't even leave the hostel until midnight, as we were enjoying all too much the good conversation and cheap, but great, wine. All the bars in town were full and the first bar we stepped into had no free tables but they told us that they had room in it's "VIP area". We were led to a room upstairs, which turned out to be nothing more than a dusty loft, which we figured must be the place where they throw the Gingos. We moved on after a couple of drinks and ended the night in a club full of crazy locals, with whom we jumped around with to football songs. It was almost like home - Mel found herself dancing and singing along to the Grease megamix with some local girls, and despite the language barrier, chatting to some other girls in the queue for the ladies toilets. I found myself being cuddled by a huge Chilean guy who took a liking to my nose and kept squeezing it! We eventually stumbled home at 5am after a great night.

After a couple of days in Valpo we made our way back to Santiago to get ready for our trip out to Easter Island, which we were both really excited about.