After spending a few days in Santiago it was time to move onto my next city, about an hour and a half away on the coast is the hill town of Valparaiso, It was amazing to see the city as we drove in with the town literally built all the way up the hill. A quick cab ride to the hostel and checked in the lady at the hostel was awesome and gave me some places to go and see and somewhere to eat.

I went for a walk to see what the town was like it is always a little daunting coming from a small town like Oamaru where there everything is only 2-3 stories high and then seeing what they call small towns here which would be 5-10 times as big as Oamaru, I walked down to the warfe were my walking tour would start the next day so I knew where to go and there was an awesome little market where I managed to pick up a few bit and pieces for people back home and grabbed some empanada's for lunch.

I went back to the hostel and introduced myself to some of the people staying there, 4 of us decided to go and find something to eat we hit a local restraints and orders what we were told was a popular Chilean dish, which consisted of fried potatoes strips of meat, cheese, fried eggs, mince and sausage all mixed in a MASSIVE bowl I was the only one that managed to finish it all but even that was a struggle, we grabbed a few beers and headed back to the hostel to have a few drinks and chat for the night which was awesome to get to know a few of the people that were staying there.

The next morning I got up and had some breakfast and me and Nabhan and Australian I met the night before decided to go to the walking tour together, It was so long we were told it would be about 2-3 hours but ended up being close to 5, It was a great way to see the city though, and we really got to see why Valparaiso is considered the world's biggest canvas, the street art was amazing and probably the highlight of the tour, after wards we decided to grab a bite to eat with a Canadian Guy and a British Couple we met on the tour, I don't know what you have to do to get some veges around here but I think it's been 3 weeks without anything other than pumpkin and potatoes, I ended up having a huge steak and fries which cost about 5000 peso which is about $11 NZ.

We went back to the hostel and met up with everyone and we all decided to go for a boat ride around the harbour which cost 3000 pesos and it was the best 3000 pesos I have spent so far on my trip, we had timed it just right for the sunset even though it was cloudy it made it all the better the patterns and colours were absolutely amazing.

We went back to the hostel and grabbed everyone to head out for the night, It was one of the girls at the hostels birthday so we went out to the bottle store where I learnt how cheap alcohol was here, it cost me $4 NZ for the 400ml bottle of Bacardi Rum which is insane and then I went to grab some coke and was even more surprized at the fact that the 1lt bottle I had just pick up was GLASS, considering we pay a ridiculous amount for a 330ml in glass this was about half the price of what you would pay for a normal 1.5 bottle back home, we all went back to the hostel and had a few drinks before heading out on the town with some more people that everyone had met during the day.

We went to a few bars and had some beers and Pisco Sours and Piscolas, Pisco is sort of like rum but quite smooth and sweet, after a while a few people wanted to head out to club but most of us decided we'd had a bit much to drink and headed back to the hostel for some sleep which suited me since I had to get up the next day to catch my next bus to La Serena.

The next morning I said goodbye to everyone at the hostel after breakfast and made my way to the bus station, this was my real first experience at hostel with people actually there and it was amazing the people I met were great and even though I was the baby of the group with most people being around 25-30 they still invited me out for meals and drinks and were great to be around most of them didn't believe me that I was 19 with how big I am and the beard, I was tempted to stay because the people were just great, so I hope you had a great Birthday Alice and thankyou's to everyone I met in my time in Valparaiso.