Well Valparaiso is a crazy place. The city is located about 1.5 hours northwest of Santiago by bus, and is right on the coast, so the port is one of it´s most important assets. The houses are all over the hillsides just stacked one on top of the other with very little in terms of segregation. You can find the nicest new houses beside or underneath something that is about to fall down. We did our research and found out that there were only two of the Cerros (hills) that were considered ok to stay in - Cerros Alegre and Concepción. We managed to stay in that local area and then just did our sightseeing during the daylight. They´re both really arty and bohemian areas with murals all over the walls and lovely little cafes and stuff which was cool.

We spent a day walking the hills around the city looking at the brightly coloured houses and the views over the Pacific and port. We´d heard a lot about Vina del Mar, a town about 25 mins north, but it turned out to be a replica of the Gold Coast in Oz with it´s highrise apartment blocks everywhere over looking the beaches which were so crammed with people it was like watching ants running around.

There´s an unbelievable amount of stray dogs in Valparaiso and they hang around in packs everywhere - it´s mad there were just 5-6 dogs around on every corner looking for food and chasing the odd car. The dawn choruses and being followed home by packs of them were definite high points!

We visited another beach town north of Valpariaso called Con Con but the weather was not our friend and we wandered around in the very low cloud for a few hours before stopping for our first try at the local Empanadas - and yup they were good :).

We had the most uninspiring hostel - 60 beds and about 5 guests! But hey it was somewhere to crash. And we did meet a couple of Aussie girls - Jess and Clare and went out for a few drinks one night in nothing other than an Irish bar - fancy that they made it to Valparasio too!! Tried a few of the local brews - some were good like the pale ales but then some were pretty rough as well like the Zippel - don´t bother :p

We decided to cut our stay short much to the dislike of our hostel seeing as we had booked another night - so we ended up spending the last day on the beach with all our packs waiting for our nightbus. What I couldn´t understand though was we got there early and picked a spot in some space and then other people would rock up and sit about 4 feet away even though there was acres of space around the beach!