Day 15: Valparaíso

TLDR: In this post, I write a bunch about our 24 hours in Valparaíso. Skip to the end if you’d rather just see the gallery of pictures!

Another weekend, another trip! Valparaíso is a popular weekend getaway from Santiago. A coastal town, it has lots of hills covered in colorful buildings and artsy graffiti. We headed there for one night/day to see the ocean, street art, and city.

Ambitiously, we pre-booked bus tickets online for the 4:35pm bus leaving from a terminal several metro stops from our apartment. We finish teaching at 3:30pm each day.

So as you might guess, this was a mistake. First off, we didn’t realize until right before we were about to head to the bus station that tickets had to be printed as opposed to showing a PDF on our phones. We don’t have a printer.

Ava, jumping into crisis response mode, grabbed her laptop and ran out of the apartment building, asking the front desk manager where the nearest printer was. She sprinted to that store only to realize she needed money. She ran back, and she actually collided with some of our other MIT teaching partners Jo and Bryan. They handed off some 100 peso coins, and Ava was off again to the races. Within a few minutes, Ava had saved the day. Printed tickets in hand, she came in clutch in a last minute scrambler, just like her “empanada hero” moment when we were about to miss our star tour in the Atacama.

While we did get the tickets printed, the rush hour mobs prevented us from getting to the terminal in time. Ironically, as a consequence of planning ahead we lost money. We didn’t make our bus! To be honest, there wasn’t anything we could have done to have gotten there faster, but it was still frustrating to fail to execute our plan. Luckily, bus tickets were around $10 so it wasn’t the end of the world to purchase a new ticket for about an hour later departure.

Once we finally made it to Valpo, it was smooth sailing. An found a great Airbnb that had enough beds for us all (me, Ava, An, Jo, Bryan, and Sebastián) and multiple bathrooms. It cost us merely $8 per person for the night. Definitely a good deal! Our hostel wasn’t located in the best part of town, but it was close to the bus station which was convenient.

That evening, we went to the ocean. We decided it would be fun to do it without directions so kind of just tried to go by the “feel of the sea” and ultimately found it. Ava and I had a blast hopping along big boulders along the coast as we watched a bunch of sea lions play. I'm realizing now that I didn't take a picture, but I guess it's good that we were so into the moment :)

Once the sun set, it was very late and we were very hungry. Our host recommended a great place to us called El Molinón. Their specialties were various grilled meats. I’d been meaning to try a “a lo pobre” dish for a while, and I decided that it was the night. Chicken with french fries, caramelized onions, and two fried eggs is far from healthy but was very good.

The meat eaters shared this huge pile of various things. Rumor has it that it was amazing!

We finished dinner past 11pm, which isn’t even that uncommon in Chile. Fueled up, we spent a while out in the town and met some cool travelers and locals. It was a fun evening in Valpo, and we went to bed tired but excited for the day to come.

The next morning (Saturday), An and Ava and I set out walking to a certain area known for good food and good street art. We were headed to Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepción. Hungry on the way there, we stopped and got an alfajore cookie and shared it, alternating bites as we walked. The streets were filled with vendors selling anything from peaches and avocado to dresses and jewelry. It was a bit chaotic but also quite intriguing.

At the base of the hill Cerro Concepción, we looked up in awe. The streets are super steep and are entirely lined with incredible graffiti art.

We saw a man spray painting a mural as we passed.

On and on we went, walking up the streets and looking around like absolutely obvious tourists, snapping pictures of lots of the great murals and colorful houses. By this point, we were super hungry and stopped at a good café called Chinchinero. We had a super leisurely meal there. An and Ava had paila de huevo con jamón y vegetales y queso. In the picture, you can see the scrambled eggs with ham, veggies, and cheese.

I had something that I eat all too often here, un sandwich de ave palta. This is just a chicken and avocado sandwich. Today I spiced it up by also getting red peppers in it.

To finish up, we decided to split a chocolate tart. It tasted quite weird and we promptly devoured the whole thing while trying to figure out what it tasted like.

Satiated for now, we kept meandering about the streets, appreciating the murals as we went. Oh, also... more food! We’ve developed a bit of an empanada obsession, and here's the delicious one we split that had pumpkin, black beans, and some other random stuff in it. It was literally from a hole-in-the-wall place.

Also, we went all out and had double dessert. I got a vanilla brownie gelato while Ava and An both got maracuya (passion fruit) flavor. Clearly, our meandering was guided and partitioned based on the delicious food stops we were making.

Below is arguably the most interesting part of this whole post- a gallery of some of the cool art and views we saw, along with some other random photos. Spending about 24 hours in Valparaíso was perfect, and I think we really made the most of it with our relaxed street wandering, taking in the incredible art and food as we went along.