We ended up staying five nights in Valparaiso, one more than planned as Marisa had one last tummy bug. Guess we couldn´t leave South America having gone over a month in perfect health.

Our day trip to Viña del Mar (it´s only 8kms from Valparaiso) happened to be on the sunniest day while we were on the coast, though it still wasn´t "beach weather". Viña is a lot more orderly and modern than Valpo - it resembles Surfers Paradise in someways - but it still has its blemishes, like the stinking cesspool that once was the river (now blocked off from the sea by a barrier of sand) and the wharf which looks to have been in disrepair for some time (though they might be doing it up now). A nice enough place to go for the day, but glad we based ourselves in Valparaiso.

From Valparaiso we caught a bus to Santiago (just over an hour away, buses running every 15mins). We weren´t particularly looking forward to heading back into the big smoke. We feared it would either be like a Central American Capital (even if you drive through Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa, Managua... you´ve spent too long there) or like a Buenos Aires redux (Euro-wannabe). Turns out, Santiago is pretty cool (once you get used to the presky smog which impedes views of the Andes) and we had no trouble filling our four days here.

And we found a pretty cool hostel (Providencia) which was centrally located and cheaper than the others by a substantial margin. That always helps one´s opinion of a city. And it has the newest, cleanest metro system we´ve ever ridden.

Our first afternoon we got a late lunch at a small family run restaurant called Kitchen: bread, pebre (chili dip), entree (salad), main course, side (rice, mashed potatoes, "golden" potatoes, or more salad), postre (small dessert such as jelly or oatmeal) and juice for 2,200 pesos. That´s about $5.50 Austalian. As I mentioned in a previous post, Chile is not, contrary to what we´d been told, that expensive, expecially concerning food. The accommodation, especially in the bigger cities, isn´t exactly cheap, but it´s not first world prices either.

We then walked around Barrio Bellavista, which is a cool little suburb full of bars, restaurants, and souvenir shops.

The next day we headed to the mountains, specifically Cajon del Maipo, which is apparently the place to go for hiking, rafting and outdoorsy fun... Well, after a half hour tube ride and an hour and a half on a local bus we made it to San Jose de Maipo. The misty-foggy-smoggy air meant that we could hardly see the mountains either side of us (we were in a canyon), and we learnt that the bus to get further up the mountains to amazing looking hot springs only ran once a day at 9am (we were there around lunch time). And all the walks cost money as you needed a guide. Considering we probably could see much, we decided to give it a miss. So Maipo was a bit of a washout really.

We did manage to get back into the city in time to climb Cerro Santa Lucia (only a wee hill) and check out the artesan market before sunset.

The next day we went to the Museum of Precolumbian Art, which set its net pretty wide, covering cultures from Mexico down to Tierra del Fuego. So there was an amazing range of artifacts, with English translations of the exhibits which was useful. Definitely worth checking out (especially if you go on Sunday, as we did, when admission is free).

After that we went to the Central Market. The fish market there is pretty amazing. Huge fish, with tons of different species, mussels, oysters, clams, sea urchins, sea sponge (they look like a huge cancerous growth, which you saw in half then pluck out the oyster like insides... that smell...), huge barnacles (picoroco) which move around when you look closely...

And attached to the market are dozens of seafood restaurants. I wanted to try picoroco (it was described to me as tasting like oysters with the texture of crayfish) but the restaurant we chose said the picorocos were bad that day, so I had a crab pie, and Marisa had prawns (which I would call shrimps, as they don´t seem to grow that big in Chilean waters). We also got complimentary ceviche and a mystery spirit (it was brown) as an aperitif. Not the cheapest meal, but definitely a cool experience.

What else have we done? We climbed Cerro San Cristobal, which is the biggest hill in the centre of the city (it has a cable car and a gondola leading up to the top if you´re lazy), where we checked out the big statue of the Virgin Mary and the hazy panoramic views.

We´ve explored various neighbourhoods: Barrio Brasil and Parque Quinta Normal, Providencia and Tobalaba, Parque Bustamante...

This afternoon we´re going to have lunch at Kitchen one last time, then explore another neighbourhood before heading to the airport. We´re flying from Santiago back to Buenos Aires, then crossing back over South America one last time on the way to Auckland. I´m sure the flights will be an adventure in themselves (and I need to do an NZ post for the sake of completeness and the map on this site) so the story´s not finished just yet.

Craig