Day 50: Valparaíso, Chile

When you have been traveling for awhile, you can very easily lose all sense of day and date. In fact, it is  mostly because of my blog (and football) that I ever have any sense of time at all. So it is only for that reason that I was able to realize that Friday, October 3, marked the fiftieth day of our adventure! It certainly has not felt like that long. Yet, when I remind myself of everything we have done since we have been in South America, and everything my friends and family have been up to since we have been away...then it feels like we have been traveling for a year. 

On day fifty, we showed no signs of slowing down. We left mid-morning by bus for a town two hours north of Santiago called Valparaíso. We had heard multiple people talk about this place, but it was only upon arrival that we understood why. Valparaíso is a bowl-shaped city, with more than half of its buildings sitting along the slopes of large hills. From a distance, the stacked homes resemble the colorful favelas of Rio. Yet up close, you can see the buildings are then further enhanced by beautiful grafitti, which covers any space that can be construed as a blank canvas. 

Before properly exploring the street art, Dan and I had to check into our hostel. It turned out, we were staying in more of a bed and breakfast than a hostel, with only three guest rooms and a very sweet caretaker. Nona, a woman in her mid-60s, sat us down in the living room to talk to us. She only spoke Spanish, so she talked slowly as she told us all about the residence and the surrounding area. We felt bad interrupting her, so she went on for a good hour, describing every last piece of "useful" information she could draw up from map or memory. 

Eventually we were able to excuse ourselves, at which point we went out for a late lunch and to look at some graffiti. On our walk, we passed a little restaurant where we unexpectedly spotted Suze and her travel mates, Chloe and Sarah. We went inside to catch up with them and had a round of pisco sours (a popular Chilean cocktail). After finishing our drinks, we made plans with the three girls to meet up in the evening, and went off to explore more of the street art.

That evening, the five of us went into town. We made a couple of stops on our bar route, enjoying the drinks and each other's company. As we went around, we observed that the city was bustling with young people, most of whom seemed to be residents of Valparaíso. The youthfulness was unsurprising given the hippieish feel of the place. Yet it was still nice to feel that we were living and hanging among locals rather than tourists. At around 2am, we called it a night and made our way up the windy roads back to Nona's.