12th January

Travelling to Valparaiso

We eventually woke up around 11 and had some breakfast with Ignacio which consisted of peanut butter, crackers and coffee. We spent the entire morning talking about various stuff, some of which we had discussed the previous evening and then promptly forgotten!! All too soon we found it to be 3 o'clock and we had to leave for the bus station to catch the bus to Valparaiso. With the weather baking hot today we were quite tired by the time we made it the mile and a half back to the tub station where we managed to catch both trains thankfully without incident and arrived just in time to catch our bus. Mae asked where we should go and after loading our bags we boarded to discover that busses in Chile have substantially more leg room and are not as cold as the ones we had used in Cuba! (they are cheaper too) The journey took around 2 hours during which Mae read her kindle and I slept (I am developing quite a talent for sleeping on buses, if not planes yet) It is also interesting to note that Chillian buses have the current speed of travel on a screen so everyone can see if the driver is speeding, which he usually is. Arriving in Valparaiso we disembarked and then found that we didn't have the address of our hostel, but fortunately there was an internet cafe nearby where we managed to orientate ourselves. We spent the rest of the day getting settled in, doing some food shopping and generally exploring the town which is set amongst several hills which you can take 100 year old cable cars up!! All the houses are painted bright colours and the cantre of the town which is located by the bay is full of pretty parks and impressive buildings. We cooked ourselves some dinner of baked potato and cheese with a sort of hot dog omelette (quite tasty, it's amazing how inventive you can be when you need to save money) and decided we would go out to try and find some salsa, we had looked up a few places to go on the internet before we arrived but as we walked aroud for the next 2 hours or so it became clear that they had all closed down and that the only place where salsa was playing was in a bar called 'La Piedra Feliz' which charges $10 entry fee!! We were not particularly impressed by this and called it a night eventually returning to the hostel around 1.30am.