Day 68: Company in Cartagena

Day 68
Today I'm in: Cartagena, Colombia

Day 68 began, as so many others have, with an early wakeup and a morning taxi ride to the Bogota airport.  Once I got checked in there, I went through security and met up with Evan, one of my best friends from Chicago and my traveling companion for the next few days.  We were headed for Cartagena, arguably Colombia's premier tourist destination, up on the Caribbean coast.  A short 90-minute flight later and we had left rainy, frigid Bogota behind and were descending into the muggy, hazy Cartagena area.

I'm back above the Equator again, so it's summer here, but in Cartagena it's basically always summer.  It's hot here - hot and humid.  Within moments of leaving an air-conditioned area you are sweating, and in a few minutes you're really sweating.  Sunglasses and sunblock are essential, and some of the (many) touts you encounter as you walk through town try to sell you hats.  After spending the last week or so in colder climates (Chile and Bogota) it's a little jarring.  But it's nice to be in the tropics again.

And none of it really matters because Cartagena is a very endearing place.  The city was one of the first European settlements in what's now Colombia and occupies a series of islands fronting the Caribbean that over the centuries have been essentially merged into one large peninsula.  The old city takes center stage, and the more modern high-rise Boca Grande area is off to the west, along the city's beaches.  The beaches are Cartagena aren't quite as ugly as I'd been led to believe, but they're not very memorable either - mostly gray sand and pretty minimal surf.  The historic center of town is what draws people here.

Our hotel, the Monterrey, faces the main gate to the old city across a wide plaza.  The hotel is in a restored colonial building and the view from our room (pictured) is pretty great.  On the roof there's a pool and a bar that looks across the various domes and steeples of the old town, and on the side streets leading from the hotel, in the slightly-newer-than-the-old-town Getsemani neighborhood, there are plenty of places to eat and drink.  We headed out to explore almost immediately after we arrived.

Despite the heat, it's pretty easy to get around, although the old town (encircled by a wall) is a bit of a labyrinth and it's also easy to get turned around, especially since the street names change every block.  We were constantly pulling out maps to determine where we were.  Even while quasi-lost, it's a great place to wander - every street has a unique view toward a church, a shady plaza, or the ramparts of the old city wall.  Many of the streets are lined by surprisingly upmarket shops and restaurants - wealthy Colombians come here in droves, and it's an increasingly popular stop for Caribbean cruises and European tourists as well.  It's also fairly compact, so in the space of a few hours we kept happening upon the same corners, the same shops and the same little squares and plazas.

You do get hassled by touts every time you turn a corner - they sell everything, from handbags to hats to snack foods to tours of nearby "historic sights" - but it's hasn't quite morphed into a complete Disney caricature.  Certain corners of the old town, especially the ones that bump up against the "rest" of Cartagena outside the walls, remind you that this is still a fully functioning Colombian city.  There are locutorios selling cell phone minutes, carnicerias selling meat, bodegas selling just about everything, and a weirdly large number of places to make photocopies.

For dinner we headed back to Getsemani and found a steakhouse with just about every cut of meat you can think of (we were hungry and decided that more uniquely Colombian food could wait until the next day.)  We each had steaks the size of baseball gloves for about half what you'd pay for a similarly-sized piece of beef at home.  Cartagena cuisine revolves around seafood - not surprising given its location - but just inland are some of the country's best grazing flatlands, so (fortunately for non-seafood fans like me) beef is a popular option as well.

We retired pretty early; Evan had flown overnight from Chicago to reach Colombia, I'd gotten up at 6am to go to the airport, and multiple hours in the punishing equatorial sun had wiped us both out.  Before heading for bed, though, we arranged a few more activities through our hotel, including a visit to one of Colombia's quirkier tourist attractions, the mud volcano of El Totumo outside of Cartagena.  More on that in tomorrow's entry.  

Day 66 & 67: Vamos Al Norte

Day 66 & 67
Today I'm in: Bogota, Colombia

I'm copping out a little bit on Day 66.  Basically I woke up, went to the Antofagasta airport, flew to Santiago, spent about five hours in the LAN lounge drinking cocktails, watching movies and surfing the web, then got on a plane and spent another six hours flying up to Colombia.  The only real bit of excitement occurred when the passenger sitting next to me dumped his drink (which, from the smell/looks of things, was some kind of amaretto and cream) all over my legs and seat.  Looks like I'll be doing laundry one more time before I head home...

We touched down in Bogota at about 10:30pm.  The streets looked very, very quiet - Bogota is a massive city, one of South America's largest (alongside Sao Paulo, Rio, Buenos Aires, Lima, Santiago and Caracas) but it was deserted and a little sinister looking by the time I got to the hotel.

I woke up the next morning to gray skies and intermittent drizzle.  Bogota sits in a valley between mountain ranges, and even in the summer sees a lot of cloudy weather and cool temperatures (it barely rose above 60 degrees while I was there.)  Umbrella in hand, I headed out to see the La Candelaria district where my hotel was located.  La Calendaria is Bogota's historic center and features a lot of steeply rising streets, brightly painted tile-roofed houses and small inns and shops.  Getting around is pretty easy thanks to Bogota's easy-to-navigate street numbering system (calles run east-west, carreras run north-south and house numbers are based on your distance from each numbered intersection) and La Candelaria is small enough that wandering is pretty straightforward.  I found the Plaza de Bolivar, the city's pigeon-filled main square (with a statue of the eponymous libertador in the center) and spent a few hours strolling the area.

For lunch I stopped into Quinua y Amarato, a small storefront shop with a team of women who work in an open kitchen preparing all sorts of dishes, each of which revolves around quinoa, the Andean grain, in some way.  I had a nice set lunch with a quinoa cake, cilantro cream soup, coconut rice and salad, all for a very agreeable price.  Colombia is a less expensive place than Chile or Brazil, although Bogota is the largest and therefore priciest city.

Outside of La Calendaria, however, Bogota seems to sprawl for mile after mile of brown-and-gray sameness.  Maybe it was the soggy skies (after lunch the rain picked up and it came down pretty hard for the rest of the afternoon) or a little bit of travel fatigue setting in, but I had a tough time warming up to the city.  Unlike the night before, there were plenty of people around - throngs of them on the streets - but despite the backdrop of misty green mountains, the city leaves a little bit to be desired, aesthetically speaking.  Things have improved a lot over the past few years, however - the TransMilenio bus rapid transit system has taken a lot of cars off the streets, the entire city center is closed to traffic on certain Sundays, and bike lanes and wider sidewalks have proliferated, making it a more pedestrian-friendly place.

After sunset I jumped in a cab and headed up to the Zona Rosa, a fashionable area north of downtown that's full of restaurants, shops and bars and is home to some of the city's swankiest apartment buildings.  At Casa, a very laid-back bar on a side street, I met up with Camila and Heinrich, two friends from Michigan who are originally from Colombia and who have moved back now that we've all graduated.  It was great to catch up with them and get some tips on things to see, foods to try and general ways to make getting around the country easier.  I'll see them again when I pass through Bogota in a week or so, and hopefully will get to see a bit more of the city with their help.

Today I'm in Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast, where my friend Evan has joined me - but that will have to wait for tomorrow.  For now, it's been a long (and very hot) day  - Cartagena isn't quite as cool and green and placid as Bogota - and it's time for bed.  

Day 65: Cut and Paste

Day 65
Today I'm in: Antofagasta, Chile

When I was planning the trip, I booked myself into Antofagasta with the intention of getting out into the Atacama Desert to see some of the more interesting sights there.  After I bought tickets, I did a bit more digging and realized that most of the things I wanted to see weren't really doable in a day trip, unless I woke up at 5am and got back at midnight.  So I found myself with the same problem I had in Arica - a full day booked in a place that, if you don't know anyone there, doesn't really have a full day's worth of things to do. I'll be the first to admit I didn't do the best job planning the northern Chile portion of the trip.

I took my time getting moving this morning and spent a lot of time just sort of vegging around in the hotel room.  When I did hit the street, I visited a Hertz branch a few blocks away to see what a rental car would cost - I figured I could at least drive a little ways into the desert and check things out - but they wanted almost $100 USD for a same-day return.  As I come up on the end of the trip, money is getting a little tighter, so that was out - Antofagasta it was.

I feel like I could just drop in my descriptions of Arica and Iquique here - Antofagasta is a nice enough city, spread along the Pacific coast with plenty of high-rise condos, sprawling suburbs and a compact, slightly scruffy city center with pedestrian malls and mobs of shoppers.  It's larger than my previous two stops (I misspoke yesterday; this is actually Chile's second-largest city, not its third) but aside from the ocean and the starkness of the desert behind it, it's not a very noteworthy place.  It's mostly just a large port and a base for mining operations going on in the Atacama.

At the recommendation of my guidebook, I did have an amazing (and cheap!) lunch at Don Pollo, a roast-chicken place in the center of town.  I'm a fan of all chicken dishes, but this was particularly good - really juicy and succulent and seasoned damn near perfection.  It's not an especially Chilean dish, but the place was thronged with people, so at the very least, it's a dish that Chilean people like, which is good enough for me.

More excitingly, shortly after I got back to the room around 4:30pm, Antofagasta was shaken by a mild earthquake.  I've been in three earthquakes before - one in Los Angeles while I was visiting my friend Brandon in 2002 (neither of us felt it, although later in the day other people were talking about it) and two in Chicago that both struck at night while I was asleep.  This is the first one I've been fully aware of while it was happening, although at first I thought it was just vibrations from the construction site behind the hotel.  It only lasted about 15 seconds, and it took me a few seconds to register what was happening.  Like I said, it was very mild - the power stayed on, the hotel made no announcements, nobody in the street below seemed to be bothered.  The worst that happened was that hundreds of car alarms all over the city went off.  But it was still an event for me.

It's really hard to believe, in a non-related item, that it's already Day 65.  One part of me feels like I just left home, while another part is starting to be ready to get back and be a bit more stationary for awhile.  With only ten days left in the trip, I'm starting to spend some of my evening downtime doing things like scheduling a Comcast installation in my new place and emailing my movers to figure out an exact delivery date for my things.  It's the beginning of the end of the trip; tomorrow I'm off to Colombia for the last leg of the journey, where it will be good to put my jacket away and get tropical again.  

Day 64: Learning to Fly

Day 64
Today I'm in: Iquique and Antofagasta, Chile

After yesterday's botched paragliding expedition, it was nice to wake up to sunny-er skies this morning.  There were still some gray clouds here and there (and the weather got worse as the day went on) but when I checked in with the staff at the flight camp they said we were definitely going up to the "takeoff site" today just before lunchtime.  With that settled, I went for a run along the beach, got breakfast, and got ready to head up into the hills.

Most of the city of Iquique is down along the water, running for about four miles along the ocean with the mountains rising up steeply behind.  In the last 15-20 years a pretty sizeable satellite city has developed at Alto Hospicio at the top of the mountains, and it's connected today by a four-lane freeway that threads its way along the side of the cliff.  That's what we - me and two other aspiring paragliders - headed up on our way to the edge of the cliff used by most of the flying companies in Iquique.

At the top we were issued "flight suits" that zipped up around our legs and arms, and then we were clipped into special seats that we wore over our shoulders and around our waist.  When you walk, the seat sort of slaps along behind you, but once you get airborne you can settle back into it, sort of like a rock-climbing harness.  We had a very lengthy safety briefing (although we were going basically as passengers and wouldn't be given much, if any, control over anything) and a demo of how the paraglider actually works.

A paraglider is about three times the size of a parachute and also has a porous surface that channels air.  Unlike a parachute, where the pores are angled vertically, on a paraglider the pores are more horizontal.  Parachutes give a controlled descent; paragliders are designed for sustained flight with lateral and vertical movement.  The view from the takeoff site was basically over the edge of a cliff; I was flying with an instructor named Cristian (they matched us up with instructors based on weight and height), who pointed out several flocks of vultures circling over the city and sand dunes.  The vultures use thermal winds to gain and lose altitude while circling; paraglider pilots look for the vultures to get a general idea of where the best thermals are and where they maneuver to quickly ascend or descend.  I got clipped into the paraglider in front of Cristian - there were about fourteen carabiners holding us together - and we were ready to go.

Since we had a pretty good breeze coming up the mountain we didn't have do much running to get airborne; only about six or seven steps and we lifted off the ground, well ahead of the edge of the cliff.  Once I settled into the seat I had to work my arms back behind the straps of the wing, so that Cristian could steer without any interference, but with that done I was free to enjoy the ride.  We went up a LOT higher initially than I was expecting; Cristian was able to catch a pretty active thermal and we spun upward smoothly, but very quickly.

I'm not afraid of heights as a general rule but there were definitely some maybe-I'm-not-OK-with-this moments, especially when other paragliders came close to us and when we went out over the ocean (if the glider falls, you're probably dead no matter what, but over sand dunes you still feel like maybe the landing will be soft.)  During the setup process I forgot to ask for a strap for my camera, so taking pictures was interesting and terrifying - I had visions of my camera plummeting down into the city or the sand dunes, so I was gripping it for dear life.  Mostly, though, the ride was a lot of fun.

We flew about 8.5 kilometers in total and the flight lasted around 35 minutes.  When it was time to land, we headed for Playa Brava, one of the city's main beaches, and found a thermal that we could use to get down.  We spiraled down pretty rapidly - passing right alongside several high-rise condo towers where residents were waving to us from the balconies - and headed for the beach.  Cristian told me to slide out of my seat so my legs were hanging - the equivalent of putting down a landing gear - which was pretty disconcerting.  The brakes are not activated until just a second or two before you hit the beach, so the sand came rushing up at a VERY fast clip.  At the last second, we hit the brakes, and the touchdown was actually very soft.  The flight company's van was waiting and we went back up to do it again.

The second flight was a little bit shorter than the first - it was getting cloudier and the winds less predictable - but we managed to make it all the way to the beach again (on certain days they have to land on the sand dunes, which means a long walk to the nearest road.)  All in all, it was an awesome experience and one I'd love to try again.  The next time I'm in Colorado or Utah I may have to look for a paragliding company; reportedly Iquique is one of the best places in the world to do it, however.  The winds in the Rockies are more turbulent and so most flights are much shorter and much more strictly controlled.  It was nice having Cristian do most of the piloting, but someday when I've got more time and money it might be fun to take some more intensive lessons and learn to do everything for myself.

After the second flight I ditched the flight suit and walked back into central Iquique for a late lunch and to take photos since I'd forgotten a camera yesterday.  The city center was much busier on Monday than it was on a Sunday morning - there were people everywhere, particularly in the Plaza General Prat, the center of town where the distinctive wooden clock tower (in place since the 1870s) looks out over the city.  In summertime (our winter) Iquique's population increases by almost 50% as southerners come north for beach holidays.

Around sunset I returned to the hotel, packed up and headed to the airport for my flight to Antofagasta, where I'm writing this entry now.  We landed at night, so I didn't get much of an introduction to the city - like Iquique, it's on the coast and backs up to the Atacama Desert, so during the descent and landing I barely saw any lights out the airplane window, just black.  I didn't even know we were as low as we were until suddenly the runway lights appeared below us.  The city itself seems to be fairly large - it's Chile's third biggest - but I'm saving the exploration for tomorrow. 

Day 62 & 63: Not Always Arica

Day 62 & 63
Today I'm in: Arica and Iquique, Chile

As further proof that I'm currently in an orderly, predictable country, the lead story on last night's Chilean national news was about a teenager who, as a nighttime prank, reset the hands on a flower clock in the city of Viña del Mar.  They devoted a full two or three minutes to the story, complete with commentary from residents who used the clock as a reference and got confused.  That's what passes for headline news here - awesome.  

Day 62 certainly felt like "Arica, siempre Arica."  I  mentioned that I wasn't sure how I was going to fill a day after seeing so much of the town in such a short time the day before.    The original plan, after all, had been to be at Lauca National Park before I discovered there was no way to dodge altitude sickness on a daytrip.  I purposely saved a few sights to give me something to do, starting with the climb up El Morro, which I reached by a set of steps up the hillside just behind my hotel.  At the top there was a panoramic view across all of Arica, plus a nice little museum explaining the finer points of the battle fought there during the War of the Pacific.    There was plenty of patriotic music and monumental sculpture as well, including several placards dedicated by ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet.

When I'd had my fill of the view I scissor-footed down the mountain (it's a really steep path) and back into town for some lunch.  I opted for another lomo a lo pobre, and this one wasn't miniature, either.  It arrived swimming in oil (not so good for me) but packed with stuff I like - eggs, steak, sausage and potatoes.  Any more than a week in Chile and I'd probably die of heart failure; I don't know how the people here manage to keep themselves healthy.

Post-lunch I walked out to Arica's beach, which is known throughout the country for being warm enough to swim in, even in the dead of winter.  I didn't bring my suit, but there were people in the water.  Compared to some of the beaches I've seen on this trip, it wasn't much of a looker - the sand is like brown sugar and the wind was a little bit strong - but the weather was nice and I could see why folks from Santiago might enjoy a trip up here.  Several large resorts are located along the beach as well, and during school holidays Arica is packed with vacationers.

That - and a lot of time lounging around the hotel room either using the computer or trying to make sense of the rapid-fire Spanish on TV - wrapped up Day 62.  This morning started before sunrise with a trip out to the airport for my flight down the coast to Iquique.  I was very happy when I got to the gate (warning: airplane dorkdom ahead) and saw a Boeing 737-200 parked at these gate.  The 737 is still the world's best-selling plane, but the -200 series came out in the late 1960s and hasn't been in use by any US carriers for about a decade.  I have lots of good memories from childhood flying -200s on Southwest, United and Delta, and it was nice to get back on one of these old planes.  They're most notable for the clamshell thrust reversers that open up when you land and make a LOT of noise.  Beautiful.

In any event, the flight down to Iquique was only about a half hour, and we arrived to mist and gloom.  Both of my days in Arica started out murky and cleared up by lunchtime, but today in Iquique that hasn't been the case - it's 5:30pm and still pretty gross-looking out.  My whole rationale for coming to Iquique was to try paragliding, which is where you parachute off of a mountaintop and then, using a series of controls, glide for anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour on your way down.  Iquique, being located right on the ocean with steep, almost vertical mountains right behind it, is the biggest paragliding center in South America, so it seemed like a good place to try it out.  I'm staying at the Altazor Flight Park, which is a paragliding school and hostel made entirely from shipping containers.  I was a little bit nervous when we pulled up, but my container is, well, fully self-contained and  actually quite nice inside, with a bathroom and bedroom inside.

Originally I was hoping to do a flight today, and when I got there at 10am the school's director penciled me in for a flight at 2:30.  He then loaned me his bike so I could go into Iquique for lunch, and I got about halfway there before I remembered I forgot my camera - so no pictures of town.  It's a pretty agreeable city, much larger and nicer than Arica, with plenty of high-rise condos underscoring its status as the country's number-one summer beach resort.  When I got back at 2:30, there was nobody around, and finally at 3:30 the instructors came back to say the winds weren't cooperating and they weren't going to do a flight today.  So I'm rescheduled for tomorrow.  The forecast is for good, strong winds, so keep your fingers crossed.  (The photo, by the way, is from Arica, not Iquique.)  

Day 61: Arica, Siempre Arica

Day 61
Today I'm in: Arica, Chile


Santiago was coated in a thick layer of frost and fog when I got to the airport this morning, which meant we had to be de-iced before takeoff.  When we climbed above the fog, the Andes, covered in snow, were visible to the east.  The flight up to Arica took almost three hours, and about an hour after leaving Santiago the fog and the clouds broke up and the terrain below took on a much drier and more hostile appearance.


Arica is literally as far north as you can go in Chile. I'm only a few hundred miles from La Paz in Bolivia, and as we turned off the runway at the airport today I was looking over the airport fence into Peru.  It's that close.  This end of Chile was wrestled from Peru and Bolivia during the War of the Pacific in the 1870s, during a series of battles that cost Bolivia her coastline and cost Peru the city of Arica, then one of its largest ports.  Chile picked up some of the most copper- and nitrate-rich areas in South America (something that's paying dividends today) and an excellent all-weather port city to boot.

Pride and passion seem to figure prominently up here.  Central Arica is dominated by El Morro, a huge rocky headland that looms over town and juts out into the Pacific.  It was the site of one of the fiercest and most decisive battles in the War of the Pacific, one which delivered Arica squarely into Chilean hands.  The Chileans are immensely proud of this and, to make sure the Bolivians and Peruvians don't forget who's boss here, have erected an enormous flag atop El Morro.  A line from a poem by Pedro Ariel Olea - "Arica, always Arica, great is my loyalty to you" - is spelled out in rocks along El Morro as well.


Arica also goes by the moniker "City of Eternal Spring."  It's true that it's far, far warmer up here than it was Santiago, but 'spring' isn't exactly what comes to mind when surveying the landscape here.  This is the northern edge of the Atacama Desert, one of the driest spots on earth, and beyond that is the Andean altiplano, where rain is a less-than-frequent occurrence as well.

There are just under 200,000 people in Arica, and with more than a few high-rise apartment towers and some sprawling suburbs it feels like a city of some substance.  I had originally hoped to drive up to Parque National Lauca on the altiplano and spend a night up there.  Once I did a bit more research, though, I learned that I'd need at least two full days in Lauca just to get acclimatized and avoid altitude sickness.  So Arica it is.

There's not a lot to see in Arica.  The downtown area is nice and compact and centers around the Paseo 21 de Mayo, a pedestrianized street lined with cafes and bars and most of the same Chilean chain stores I found in Santiago and Valparaiso (my favorite is an electronics store called "ABCDins.")  One of the more notable attractions is the Iglesia San Marcos (St. Mark's Church), which was designed by none other than Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, of Parisian tower fame.  Fittingly, the entire church is built from cast iron, like the Eiffel Tower, that's been painted.  Eiffel also designed the former waterfront Customs House, which is now marooned inland thanks to landfill projects that expanded the port and has been converted rather cleverly into an amphitheater and performing arts center.  The only occupant when I visited was a sleeping stray dog - Chile has a huge population of urban stray dogs, most of which were turned loose from homes and are consequently very tame and friendly.  They seem well cared for - a lot of shops have adopted them as mascots and keep them fed and watered - and it's kind of nice to have a dog or two trotting along with you while you go sightseeing.

After getting settled at the hotel and doing some sightseeing I stopped by a cafe for lunch and tried a miniature platter of lomo de lo pobre ("poor man's steak"), a Chilean dish consisting of steak, a fried egg, rice and french fries.  This was a small plate - some restaurants serve it on a dish so large you need both hands to carry it - but I figured I should try it before I jump in with both feet.  It wasn't too bad, especially when chased with a pisco sour (another bone of contention between Chileans and Peruvians, who each claim it as their national drink.)

It took just a few hours to get acquainted with Arica, which has left me wondering what the hell I'm going to do with a full day here tomorrow.  I've saved a few activities (climbing El Morro, checking out the beach south of town) but in general I suspect tomorrow's going to be a fairly lazy day.

Day 60: To the coast and back

Day 60
Today I'm in: Santiago, Chile

After going back and forth about whether I should go to Valparaiso for the day (and getting lots of positive reinforcement from friends who had been) I woke up on Day 60 and decided to go for it.  There are buses from Santiago to Valparaiso every ten minutes on weekdays, so getting there was a cinch, and the bus station is conveniently connected to the city's metro (I told you I love this city!)

Santiago was shivering under dense fog and temperatures in the high 30s, so I packed for the worst - I even bought a scarf at the bus station.  We rolled out through the misty, gray suburbs of Santiago and climbed into the Cordillera Coastal, the range of mountains separating the capital from the ocean.  When we popped out of the tunnel through the cordillera, the fog was gone, the sun was out, and the skies were as blue as they'd been in South Africa.  Go figure.  On the way into Valparaiso we passed mile after mile of wine estates; Chile's become famous for its wines in the last few decades, and judging from the number of tour buses in the parking lots plenty of people are coming to check things out.

To call Valparaiso a spontaneously-planned city is to put it lightly.  Things start out manageable enough on El Plan ("the plain") where a gridded street network faces the city's waterfront and its all-important port.  El Plan is appealingly scruffy in a maybe-this-isn't-the-best-place-to-walk-around-at-night kind of way.  Rising up behind El Plan, however, are the city's 42 hills, where any trace of cartographic realism goes out the window.  The hills are linked to El Plan by a labyrinthine system of cobbled streets, narrow crumbling stairways, and the city's famous acensores - late 19th-century funiculars that crawl up and down the slopes saving residents' knees the trouble of walking.

Or they would if they were working.  Riding an acensor is supposed to be a definitive Valparaiso experience - like riding a gondola in Venice or an elephant in India - and I went to four different stations trying to catch a ride on one.  Two of them looked like they had been closed a long time (the doors were closed with rusty padlocks) and the other two had signs announcing "temporary" closures for restoration work.

First I headed for Cerro Bellavista, where Pablo Neruda once lived and that's home once again to a growing colony of artists and writers.  The houses on the hills are famously ramshackle - many of them are little more than grafted-together assemblages of corrugated steel and tin.  The steel is painted in bright colors, though, so looking across Valparaiso's hills is always pleasant, and since the whole city was branded a UNESCO site a few years ago many of the houses have been redeveloped into hotels and restaurants.  The views across the hillsides and toward the bay, which is lined with container-lifting cranes and full of enormous tanker ships, come out of nowhere and are pretty spectacular.

From Bellavista I headed for Cerro Alegre, which is right next door, but getting there (thanks to the malfunctioning acensores) required that I negotiate a series of narrow steps and impossibly steep alleyways. Alegre was the first hill to begin drawing tourists, and it felt very fashionable, with lots of classy guesthouses, wine bars and ice cream shops along its streets.  I had lunch at a bistro, Cafe Vinilo, where I ordered a carne mechada steak that was served up with a big helping of Chilean vegetables - quinoa, pumpkin, green beans, potatoes and corn - and drowned in spicy gravy.  Good stuff.

Finally I made my way to Cerro Carcel, which is topped by the ruins of an 18th-century prison (carcel in Spanish) that's being slowly remodeled into a museum designed by our friend Oscar Niemeyer, who built Brasilia back in the 1950s.  It also boasts a great view across the rooftops to the port area - until the opening of the Panama Canal, Valparaiso was one of South America's most important ports, where ships would stop to recover from or stock up for the stormy journey around Tierra del Fuego at the bottom of the continent.  Today it serves a more utilitarian role handling Chilean goods, and it's also the home of Chile's navy, but the overwhelming feeling is of being in a city whose glory days are well behind it.

Mostly, though, it's a pretty absurdly cool city, and I'm really glad I went to see it, if only for a few hours.  Naturally, as soon as the bus climbed up into the Cordillera Coastal on the way back to Santiago, the mist rolled back in, the windows fogged up and the driver turned the heater up to full blast.  I celebrated my return to Santiago with dinner and a few drinks in the Providencia neighborhood, which I hadn't had a chance to see the day before.  Not a bad way to spend a day!