I love friends: Valpo and Viña.

I arrived back in Conce very early this morning…not even bright and early, but dark and early, circa 5 AM. The two night-long bus rides were completely worth it—I had a wonderful weekend in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar.

Julie and I arrived in Viña at 6:30 AM on Friday and walked to our hostel, as it was relatively close to the bus station. We found the hostel without any problems, but ended up sitting outside the gate for an hour, ringing the bell countless times, eventually saying less than polite greetings to whoever may have been on the other end, asking to be let in. We called over and over on the phone, all to no avail. At promptly 8 o’clock, we got a voice on the other end! Turns out, although we had said on our reservation that we were arriving at 7, their reception doesn’t start until 8…hmm. This, and a cold shower, led me to believe that our hostel was a bad choice. I was wrong. It ended up being fine, for a number of reasons: (1) quite cheap ($11-ish per night), (2) lock on our door, (3) good breakfast, (4) helpful receptionist, Felipe, who told us where to go and where not to go, (5) clean, (6) hot showers! I just had to ask. Ha. Thank you, Mom, for one of the best lessons of my life…

On Friday, after a little rest, we explored Viña. Viña is a really touristy place; it was basically built so that people from Santiago would have a place to vacation (it’s about an hour or so from Santiago, far enough to get away, but close enough to be convenient). Its nickname is “The Garden City”, which is quite fitting. The streets are lined with trees (many palms) and flower beds. It is clean, orderly, and well-lit. There are castles and a presidential palace close to the coast, along with a huge Sheraton (globalization, anyone?). If you’re looking for someplace to eat, there is a McDonald’s, a Pizza Hut, a Domino’s, and a Starbucks. Wow. The casino is also in Viña, and it contains the nicest bathroom in all of Chile, in my opinion (with toilet paper, and free of charge!). Past the commercial district, there is a beach along the coast. There are these funny exercise-machine things on the beach, which don’t work as well as real ones, but raise exercise awareness, at least, and are fun for tourists to use.

On Friday night, Julie and I napped and then took a bus to Valpo (about 20 mins from Viña) with Lauren. We met up with Celine and her friend Claudio and walked around the city, going to the top of a few cerros (hills---Valpo is full of them, about 42 in total) to see the city at night. It is really pretty. Viña and Valpo are situated around a bay, and at night, all the lights on the hills look really cool. After getting our fill of the scenery, we found a little bar called the Canary (el Canario, in Spanish) and had a wine-with-fruit…like a punch kind of thing. Some guys at a table near ours bought us a bottle of beer (I know that sounds lame to buy one bottle of beer for five people, but this was a liter bottle, not a normal-US-sized one), and eventually came over to talk to us. The guy I talked to told me about the fiancée he had had for two years in LA…I think he was making things up.

Saturday morning we slept in late before meeting up with a whole group of non-Chileans. Danielle, Matt, Lauren, Navee, Jay (all from the Midd program), and Ingrit (from Colombia) took a city bus with Julie and I to Concón, a town about 20 minutes north of Viña, another beach spot. We went to see the dunes there. It was really cool; we got off our bus and across the street were huge hills of sand! In the exploration process, most of us ended up without shoes and with sand in our hair, ears, clothing, etc (there was a bit of wind…). On the other side of the dunes, the coastal side, there was this overlook place near a bunch of huge rocks. We climbed around on the rocks for awhile (like a jungle gym for adults, but so much better), got as close to the ocean as possible and enjoyed the gorgeous day.

That afternoon, Julie and I went to Valpo with Matt and explored one of the cerros there. We went up in an ‘ascensor’ (technically translates to ‘elevator’…like a funicular) and walked around the hill. We found a building from the University of Valparaíso there—the U of Valpo has buildings all over Valparaíso, Viña, and even in places close to Concón. I am so glad the U of Conce has a campus…

View of the port in Valpo from the ascensor.

Saturday night, I met up with Danielle and Matt to go out. We went to a bar in Viña before going to the house of one of Danielle’s gringo friends. He had invited the whole group from his school to his host parents’. There are about 20 students in the group, all from a college in Minnesota—they take their classes together and don’t speak quite as much Spanish as we do…therefore, the entire party was in English. It was funny making the Spanish to English transition. I kept answering with ‘sí’ instead of yes, and it was a strange experience meeting people who could say my name!

On Sunday, we went to church with Lauren and then met up with Celine to go to the fish market in Valpo. The four of us found a little restaurant and had lunch. SO MUCH LUNCH. The meal began with little teeny pisco sours (pisco is the alcohol of Chile, very common, and a pisco sour is pisco with lemon juice, an egg white, and something…) and bread with pebre (a spicy salsa-type thing that goes on bread). That was followed by crab and cheese empanadas (which are delicious—if you’re ever in Chile, please eat one!), and finally, the official meal of shellfish/seafood empanadas, a filet of fish, and a side dish (salad, rice, or mashed potatoes). To end the meal, we had little teeny glasses of some sweet liquor. Each of us had a different flavor, and the waiter who explained the options to us was funny, speaking in Spanish and English and counting on his fingers (because we didn’t know what all the flavors were, I think he thought we didn’t really speak Spanish). We asked him to take a picture of us as a group, and he took about fifteen. Ha.

After lunch, Lauren, Julie, and I took a micro to ‘La Sebastiana’, one of Pablo Neruda’s three houses. The bus ride itself was fun, with great views of the cerros and the city. Neruda’s house was really interesting and eclectic. A picture of it is below. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but the place was filled with cool artwork, old maps, and antiquey things, all surrounded by brightly-colored walls (paint, wallpaper, tiles, stone murals, etc).

A picture taken from the bus

Another bus shot

La Sebastiana

The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the cerros, especially Cerro Alegre (alegre = happy) and Cerro Concepción. These two are the most traveled by tourists, and I can see why: they are filled not only with colorful buildings, but with tons of artistic murals and graffiti.

Once the sun set, we took our final micro back to Viña, said our goodbyes to a few other friends, ate some more empanadas (I love empanadas…why are they not popular/ why don’t they exist in the US?), went back to the hostel to get our bags, and got on our bus to head home. I am so glad I got to spend this weekend traveling with Julie and with friends from Midd. It was really nice to see everyone and spend time with people I know well. In conversation, I learned that most of them also do not have many close Chilean friends yet, which is encouraging. I now know I’m not the only one, which gives me more gusto to get to know Chileans!

Although I had no class AGAIN today, I should get going to my homework, lunch, etc. I have a lot more pictures from this trip than I could put on here…I’m trying to set up a web album so that people without facebook access can see them. Once that’s going, I’ll let you know.

Hope you all are well!

Love,

A slightly over-tired but high-spirited Tiernan