VALPARAISO, CHILE

Today, at around midday, we arrived in Valparaiso, in Chile.

It’s an overnight stop, so with Tracey and I being down for escorting duties tomorrow, we decided to take the opportunity of a free afternoon to have a look at the city.

Marco Polo was tied up by the quayside, alongside several container ships. At the end of the quay and through a gate – what would be nothing more than a 5-minute walk – was the old harbour and Old Town. I say ‘what would be’, because no-one is allowed to walk anywhere within the port – not even the short length of the quay to the old town. Instead, we had to catch a shuttle bus, which took us right across to the opposite side of the bay, to the terminal, where we had our bags checked for fruit and veg, and had to catch a second shuttle bus to take us into town.

By this point, we assumed that the second shuttle bus would take us outside the gates, back the whole length of the bay, back to the Old Town… how wrong we were.

The second shuttle bus took us further around the bay, further away from the Old Town, and dumped us alongside a circus tent, from where we had to cross a railway line, and found ourselves in the busy market and bus station end of the city, a good mile or so from the Old Town. For some, that meant paying for a taxi ride. For us, it meant a 30-40 minute walk along busy streets. A stranger came up to me wielding a mobile phone displaying a text message that said these streets are unsafe and that there are thieves… nice.

So, why walk to the Old Town? Simply because that is the part of the city that is supposed to be the most interesting. So interesting that it is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Valparaiso is built on several hills. Many of the buildings, as far as you can see, climbing up the sides of the hills, are multi-coloured, yet in the newer parts of the city, these are looked down upon from hideous-looking high-rise buildings. Once we’d reached the Old Town, we climbed one of the many flights of steps, where the walls are riddled with graffiti, to the upper quarter, which is also accessible via several funicular railways.

The views from the top were relatively extensive, but not particularly nice, since much of the view was blocked by the high-rises. We could see across to a large cemetery on the opposite side of a dip, which was mildly interesting, and we came across a couple of churches, which were all closed. The graffiti up here is less motorway-bridge, and more ornate and ‘banksy’, and one of the things that caught my attention was the fact that most of the old buildings were clad in corrugated iron.

We walked a bit, climbed a couple more stone staircases and paused briefly at a viewing point to eat an ice cream and drink water, but Valparaiso simply wasn’t doing it for us. It felt a little bit like Lisbon, but more run-down, and there were just too many street corners smelling of wee to like it. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t like it either; it left me feeling quite indifferent.

Back down at lower street level, despite being only a stone’s throw from the Marco Polo (and heaven knows why they didn’t just open a gate by the ship to let us through into the Old Town, which might have endeared us to it a little more), we started our 30-40 minute walk back to the opposite side of the bay, past many people sleeping in cardboard boxes and old tents, back to the point where we had to cross the railway line, board the shuttle bus to take us back to the terminal, and catch the second shuttle bus to return us to the ship. What a flippin’ palaver!