South America Part 21 - Valparaiso Sightseeing and Ripoffs

When we got back from CineHoyts the previous night - we discovered that our hostel bedroom had been overrun by bugs - small worm like creatures had shed their wings (on our bed) and were climbing over everything. We had to make do with some home-made insect spray (made out of Lynx Deodorant and Rid Insect Repellent). We dub this hostel - hostel de bugs.

After waiting another 45 minutes for a shower at our hostel (this appears to be a daily ritual here) - we strolled down to the other side of town to do some sightseeing - Valparaiso style.

Because Valparaiso has some very steep hills - there are "ascensors" or funicular railways built everywhere so commuters (and tourists) and get up the hills without buring off any calories from the junk food sold everywhere. According to our tourist map of Valparaiso - they are "an important part of the city´s identity, dating back a centennial, constitute a current and complete transportation sytem. They are fundamental for the vertical development of the city. The trolleys also give a distinctive seal to Valparaiso and they are a valuable and efficient transportation system for its citzens." Well in an attempt to get to the Naval Museum - two ascensors were broken and we had to walk up the hill the old fashioned way.

Once you get above the bustling city streets - it is rather peaceful up on the hills (and scenic too). We took a few happy snaps of the sights (damn Ant´s 1g memory card and long life batteries - he takes shots of everything!) but were careful not to take any of the local military installations. Taking shots of ships and bases might land tourists into jail.

I probably should take a quote out of the aforementioned tourist map for Valparaiso (in it´s uncensored spanglish form). The map rights about a quote from "...the Chilean Nobel Prize Winner for Literature Pablo Neruda, who lived in the city...". The map says "Neruda declared his love to this "crazy port" to this "adsurdity" of a city, indicating that, if we walk through all of Valparaiso´s stairways "we will have travelled around the world" ". ´Em fighting words.

After about 1 hour of walking - we rocked up to the Naval museum only to discover that there was a big military do and that most of the museum was shut today. Fortunately - we could get in for free and did see a fair few exhibits. The Chileans seem very "up themselves" - taking pride in many of their victories of the evil spanish... A lot of their exhibits were getting beyond the "Vietnamese" level of propaganda and they weren't shy about using superlatives over their deceased generals ("he was an outstanding solider of the highest calibre and was hot to boot"...).

After dodging the local "llama man who wants your money" outside the museum - we headed back down to town for lunch at a cafe. We ordered two "Chicken Sandwiches with Mayo and Avocados" and two "Meat Empinadas" - what we got was one "Meat Hamburger with Avocado" and two "Cheesy Empinadas"... ¿Que? Hey - at least the woman got our order for beer right. We finally found an open "ascensor" (for $100 pesos - 25c AUD) and attempted to find the local art gallery - only to find it shut for refurbishment. We wandered back down the hill and wanted to check out an open air mural "gallery" - recommended in LP. When we got to that "ascensor" - the tickets were $150 each - so Ant handed over a $500 coin expecting change - I handed over $300 worth of coins thinking that I was paying for Ant as well... The b"""" a%% h" woman took all of our money and then didn't give us any change. After we were doing the whole "give me change" handmovements - she pushed us onto the train and off it went (sin change). Don't be surprised if this place isn't firebombed any time soon. (I know we are b###hing about 2 AUD but it is the principle that counts).

At the top - we had a look at some of the murals (which were pretty and gave the whole area a bit of an arty bohemian feel) - but were scared off by a few rabies dogs who could taste our fear. One looked like it was ready to pounce on us from a 2 storey building.

When we got down to town - we found the local "Natural History" Museum. The security man at the entrance told us that the tickets were $400 each - we went to the man with the tickets and handed over a $2000 note. He then ripped out three tickets (for the two of us) and gave us $200 change saying that the price had gone up to $600 (or something in Spanish). Yet - it didn't explain why we would want 3 tickets. Feeling pi$$ed off over the stewpid vincilucar railroad - we couldn't put up with this sort of s$$$ so we took the $2000 note out of the guy´'s hand and stormed out. I didn't realise that Chile was supposed to be all sleazy when it comes to ripping off tourists. We thought it was supposed to be the most developed out of all Sth American countries - but we didn't even get treated like this in Peru (which is a lot poorer than Chile).

Anyhows - feeling a bit pissy (and the fact that we had exhausted Valparaiso´s sights) - we caught the train back to Vina Del Mar. Speaking of ripoffs - everyone has to buy a 900 peso ticket (which has 900 pesos of credit on it). But even if you have heaps of credit left over - you are forced to top-up your card to at least 780 pesos every trip. 780 equals the maximum ride but this is a bit pi#s weak. The train looks mega expensive to build (flash stations, flash train, heaps of staff who try and explain the ticket system to confused locals and tourists alike) and there was hardly anyone on it. Feeling like we needed to get our moneys worth - we headed down past Vina to about 1/2 hour to some strange town (which wasn´t in LP). We did the sneaky and walk to the other side of the station and caught it back to Vina. The smart card tickets only charged us if we had only gone from Valparaiso to Vina...

When we got back to Vina - we checked out not only the mall that we had visited the day before - but also another mall... Getting really bored - I bought a Happyland card for 1500 pesos and played a couple of games of Air Hockey... After eating Telepizza (if you like cold, stale pizza then this is your place) and getting even more bored - we decided to risk our safety and walk back along the beach (where the rabies infected dog had chased us for 20 minutes the previous day). Alas - no rabies dog could be found.

We decided to have an early night (as we had a super early morning latino time start the next day - a 10am bus).