I have touted the wonders of Chile for forty years. From 1985 – 2000 I traveled here so much for work that I lost count somewhere along the way. But I don’t recall ever coming to spend time in Valparaiso. Whenever I would come to Santiago and some wealthy counterparty or client would want to show me the sights (other than for skiing in the Andes Mountains), we would go to the lovely resort town of Vina Del Mar, which is just north of Valparaiso. Valparaiso always seems like more of a work-a-day place and part town rather than a place to go play.
At this moment, I am sitting on our small veranda to our cabin on the Viking Jupiter. this is the embarkation point for our cruise around Cape Horn, ending in Buenos Aires 18 days from now. I know that this is a very popular cruise these days, but that doesn’t lessen in the least the pleasure for me of finally doing something that I probably should have done years ago, seeing the parts of Latin America in the southern-most part of the continent, the southern-most place on earth this side of Antarctica. I have a favorite painting by an Argentine artist called Rikelme of a lone tree on the Pampas of Patagonia. It is a quasi-impressionistic painting similar to those painted by the Group of Seven artist from Canada a hundred years ago. The painting is titled “Solo en la Immensidad”, which translates to “Alone in the Vastness”. It speaks to me for some reason and I take it to represent the grandeur of nature where this one lone tree has formed an ecosystem that shelters and nurtures all of those that gather around it. That thought is strangely appealing to me just like Auda Abu Tayi’s speech to Lawrence of Arabia about being a river to his people resonates with me.
I have noted that Valparaiso sits on the 33rd South Latitude, which is particularly interesting to me because I have discovered that our hilltop in the North County of San Diego sits almost precisely on the 33rd North Latitude. That means we are as far north of the Equator as Valparaiso is south of the Equator. It is not surprising that the weather here and the flora seem so familiar. However, our hilltop is a full 45 degrees west by measured Longitude than Valparaiso. That means to my simple geometric mind that our hilltop is a quarter of the way from being on the other side of the earth from Valparaiso. There is something about the similarity and juxtapositioning of the place that intrigues me all of a sudden.
Being our first day on the cruise, and despite not actually setting sail yet, today was our first shore excursion since yesterday was all about getting here from the Santiago airport and going through the process of checking in, getting onboard and unpacking for our 18-day adventure. Kim and I were both dog-tired after our twenty hours of travel, so yesterday was not a day to appreciate our destination, but rather to just keep our eyes open through dinner with our friends Mike & Melisa and Faraj & Yasuko, who had spent an extra day in Santiago to see the sights there. We were supposed to be meeting up today with our friends Ann & Chris, but it seems American Airlines had other ideas and cancelled their flight. As best we can determine at this stage, they will fly down to Santiago tomorrow morning as we are on our way down the coast of Chile and then hopefully fly down to meet us in puerto Montt, our first stop on the journey south.
Today, after a modest breakfast in the onboard World Cafe, we bused our way to the terminal to…get on another bus to tour Valparaiso. First days on these cruises is always interesting as everyone is getting their sea legs and sorting our the Viking protocol. One of the shore excursion tricks that Viking uses is to give every passenger a receiver to allow them to hear their tour guide regardless of close they are to him/her. This device has to be used with a set of plug-in earphones. The number of people on Day 1 that did not know to bring their receivers or bring their earphones or understand how to use them (cruising is an old person activity so there are lots of blank stares at all new-angles things and procedures). Also, to coin a phrase that Melisa used, everyone on the cruise seems to walk with the Tim Conway old-guy shuffle. I don’t laugh too hard at that because I’m sure that to some whippersnapper, I do my share of shuffling (especially walking down steep cobblestone streets). So, we took a tour around Valparaiso, which is set like a shallow bowl around a harbor. I’m sure in the late 19th Century when 30,000 British citizens lived here and the city was a bigger port than San Francisco, the hills around the harbor were just a way for the well-to-do to rise above the riff-raff. But now this town of 300,000 has spread to cover every inch of those hills and the town is covered with funiculars that transport people up and down the steepest of those hills. Viking excursion people are no dopes, they took our bus to the top of one hill and told us to walk down the seven blocks through multi-colored homes and wall murals that have made this a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its quaintness. We made our way down the hill to a museum and then to the top of a popular funicular that seated only 10 people at a time. That brought us to a plaza where the street stalls with indigenous handicrafts were adjacent to a plaza with celebrants of Worlds Women’s Day, obviously a big deal here in Valparaiso.
Kim and I decided to set the tone for the trip by abandoning the bus group and venturing off on our own. The lure of the shopping stalls was singing a siren’s song into Kim’s ear and I was just ready for anything other than the bus, so we told the tour guide and went forth alone into the raucous crowd. Several choice souvenirs later and a show by a local young women’s drum and dance group, we caught a taxi back to the ship terminal. After 20 minutes of not budging due to the parade, we finally broke free and got back to the ship in time to meet the returning bus warriors for lunch in the same World Cafe where we started the day.
During the day, we not only got an appreciation for the beauty of Valparaiso but also a sense for the history of the place. Due to its position as the first real port after the passage around Cape Horn or through the Straights of Magellan, this was the place to be in this part of the world. This was and is a special city and I am just glad that I finally, after all these years of coming to Chile and being as close as Vina Del Mar, that I have gotten my chance to finally experience the jewel of the Pacific up close and personal. This was a good start to our voyage in our view.