Today I made a day-trip to Valparaiso. This is Chile's main harbor, and the typical stop for ships that sail around Cape Horn. First of all I was impressed by the buses. They are extremely cheap, fast and yet comfortable. There's lots of leg room, and the seats are very comfty. There's even TV screens onboard where they show movies, and at some stops people come on the bus that offer drinks or snacks. This is way better than flying! I'm in Valparaiso within 90 minutes and the trip cost me only 10 Dollars!

Valparaiso is not exactly a clean and nice, but a very interesting city. Being a harbor city makes it very diverse and international, and a bit sketchy at the same time. One of the city's special aspects is that it's build into the steep coastline and has many old wooden elevators that you can take to get up and down for about 1 dollar per ride. The harbor is impressive and has lot's of big cranes, ships, and even some destroyers (it's the main harbor, so I guess it's an important base for Chile's Marine)

Here I buy an underwater camera that I hope to be using in the next few days. After lunch and a walk through the city, I relax in the sunshine on a couple of big rocks lined up on the coastline. There are the remainders of an old landing bridge. At first I thought that the surfaces look funny, until I realize that the top level is completely covered by seagulls, while the lower level is complete covered by sea lions (see pic). And all sunbathing like me :-)