Week 6: Valparaíso

Greetings!

Ugh.  Writing this post is hard.  It's our last from Chile; tonight we fly to Auckland.  We're going to work on a separate "reflections on Chile" blog post and dedicate this one to our time in Valparaíso.

Valparaíso is an amazing city.  It was a significant port city for ships rounding South America on their way north or across the Pacific, but the Panama Canal crushed the shipping industry in Valparaíso.  It's still mostly poor, even though there's been a bit of a rebound recently, partially because they started building ships that can't fit through the canal (whose idea was that?), but mostly because Valparaíso has reinvented itself as an educational and cultural hub of Chile.   

What we found most amazing about it, though, is the beautifully haphazard way in which it seems to have spread itself across its dozens of cerros (hills) and the endless murals painted on walls and doors throughout the city.  It's very dirty, but I found the grime to contribute to the charm, or at least to be overshadowed by the charm (I'm not speaking for Aimee here).  Could do with a bit less dog poop on the sidewalks, though.

Valparaíso has a tradition of independence - nay, anarchy - and that tradition seems to have extended to building and electrical codes: there do not appear to be any.  As best we can tell, all of the houses are where they are because someone dared someone else to build a house there, not because a house actually should be built there.  It's hard to do this justice with words - hopefully you can see it in the photos.  The best I can do is to compare it to Jenga, but on a citywide scale.  Also, if you do happen to live in a house precariously perched on the side of a cerro and need electricity?  You just hook the house up to the cables outside yourself, of course.

The murals are the highlight of Valparaíso, particularly where we stayed, in Cerro Alegre (all of the cerros have names).  It seems that there is an unwritten code to how and when the murals are painted, though there is some soft administration by neighborhood associations and property owners.  We talked to a British couple who were in the progress of painting a huge new mural about how they came to be painting on that particular wall.  They explained that they had stayed in the building as guests and simply asked the owner if they could paint over the old mural adorning the building's exterior.  We got the sense that if you decided to paint or graffiti over an existing mural without some sort of permission, there would be undesirable consequences, unofficially dealt.

Beard/hair goals

This one provoked some giggles from the boys

We spent our days in Valparaíso walking the streets of the surrounding cerros and enjoying the murals.  We went to the beach in neighboring Viña del Mar, more of a vacation destination for residents of Santiago.  We went to the same amazing candy shop every day to watch them make candy.  We watched a Red Bull-sponsored urban mountain biking event in which the participants raced against the clock, down through the city, passing over walls, off man-made obstacles, and even through homes.

We spent a lot of time and money in this place

Yesterday, we spent the day walking around with a lovely family from Santiago that we met in the apartment complex where we stayed.  The couple are our age: she's a yoga instructor and he's an architect-turned-pastry chef (sound familiar??).  They have a 10 year-old daughter (Cam was smitten) and a 7 year-old son.  We had lunch, which turned into an afternoon by the pool, which turned into dinner.  It was another fantastic encounter with people we now call friends.

If someone reminds you of Paru,
you know they'll be a good friend

Someone asked me today about my favorite part of our time in Chile and I'm not sure that all of the beautiful places we've seen won't be overshadowed by the people we have met and befriended.  We can only hope for more of the same in New Zealand.  

But I will also say that, in a somewhat unexpected way, our development of these new friendships in Chile has strengthened our fondness for our friends and family back home.  The more friends we make on our travels, the more we miss all of you.  Perhaps we take for granted the friends and family always surrounding us, accessible to us all of the time, in our everyday lives.  And, so, when we encounter a novel friendship during our travels, it stirs something in our hearts, reminding us of the special quality of those friendships (and family relationships) nurtured over many years.  Not to mention that all of the getting-to-know-you part of new friendships takes a lot of processing and energy (particularly when it's done in another language), so you miss the comfort of familiarity.

So now, New Zealand.  We'll work on putting together our Chile wrap up post and then check in after our time in Auckland.  

A bit of an Auckland sneak-peak first, though: we have a babysitter one night(!), we have tickets to a pro rugby match another, and friends-of-Whitefish-Bay-friends who live in Auckland have invited us over for a bbq on the weekend (they lent us the babysitter, as well).

Stay tuned!

With love,

Max, Aimee, Cam & Wes