We got up at 6.00 this morning to find we had almost arrived already in Valparaiso, the second biggest town in Chile. It was still dark so we could see all the city lights over the hillsides - it is called the city of 42 hills, and we could see this clearly already! We got ready quickly then went up on deck to find it was rather cloudy still and a little chilly, but we were sure it would warm up as nearby Santiago was always around 30 degrees minimum.
We met in the theatre at 8am for our tour - Valparaiso in Depth. When we went ashore we first had to get a shuttle bus to take us through the port to the terminal, as where we were docked was in the middle of a busy working area full of enormous containers, cranes moving them, ships dropping them off, and lorries collecting them. At the terminal we had to go through security which was mainly to check no one had brought any agricultural products ashore. They did this using X-ray machines but also sniffer dogs who were let out into the line to check for any sneakily smuggled bananas! There are large fines and you can even be imprisoned for carrying any food items ashore, which means for the first time I had come off the boat with no food whatsoever - my first stop was therefore the small snack shop in the terminal to buy some biscuits to keep me going throughout the morning!
We then boarded our coach and met our guide and driver. The guide, Luis, was young and enthusiastic, and announced that he was going to make this the best tour we had ever had! We set off through the town, passing lots of brightly coloured, intricately designed and decorated buildings, and pretty squares with palm trees. At one point we stopped at some traffic lights and a juggler appeared and started juggling in the middle of the road! I assumed he was then going to come and ask for money but when the lights turned green he just wandered off - our guide said the are lots of artists like this in the city who just perform for the fun of it!
We drove up one of the many hills to the Paseo 21 de Mayo where we stopped to admire the city from the high viewpoint and saw the imposing Naval Museum. Next we stopped at the main square, Plaza Victoria, where we saw some gorgeous hotels and official buildings, including one which had the facade and columns of an old building but with a modern glass structure built inside it - since the city has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, they are not allowed to knock down any of the older buildings so had to adapt it instead! We also saw some local artists painting the outsides of the buildings - we have noticed that there has been a lot of graffiti in most of the places we have visited in South America, but here they seemed to be turning it into a most respected art form, as there were intricate paintings all over many of the walls.
Our next stop was at the entrance to one of the funiculars (cogwheel cable car elevator things). These are essential for the city's residents to get up and down the steep hills. The one we stopped at looked like it was at an angle of about 80 degrees! Eek! The carriage only held 9 people so a few of us got in and then waited for the carriage at the top to fill up as well. It then juddered into action for the scariest 20 seconds of my life!! At the top it paused for what seemed like an endless length of time (it reminded me very much of the pause at the top of the Tower Of Terror in the Disney theme parks, just before the lift plummets back down!!) Thankfully eventually the door at the top opened and we were let out!!!
We then had around a 45 minute walking tour of some of the upper neighbourhoods of the city, which was absolutely fascinating. We saw loads of beautiful houses, hotels and shops, some churches, views all over the city, and painting painting everywhere! There were huge murals painted on many of the walls, on the streets, on the lampposts, on the plant pots, and on the steps (one staircase had multicoloured steps, another was painted to look like a piano!). We even saw a couple of dog kennels which were part of a huge scene, and another side wall painted with a Van Gogh montage. I nearly ended up losing the tour group as I kept stopping to take so many photos!
We picked up our coach again which this time took us to visit La Sebastiana, which is where the Nobel prize winning poet Pablo Neruda lived, and has now been made into a museum about him. It is a beautiful house, on 4 or 5 floors, and has a fascinating collection of furniture including a carrousel horse, a couple of stuffed tropical birds, and a entire room devoted to a bar! It also had wonderful views over the city.
Up until this point the tour had run very smoothly, but the guide made one fatal mistake at this museum - he didn't give people a meeting time to be back out of the museum. This meant that some people were in and out in no time, while others took their time looking carefully at all the exhibits and listening to the audio guide and watching the information video. I realised at one point that I couldn't see anyone else from our group in the museum so I headed back outside, to find most of the group and the escort (who is one of the port presenters from the ship) waiting there looking a bit grumpy. Despite our predictions about the weather, it had actually turned out to be rather chilly and a bit drizzly, and JL was freezing in his shorts and T-shirt! The guide was nowhere to be seen, one woman could no longer find her husband, and the escort was getting frustrated. She went back to the museum to try and find the guide and the missing passengers but realised she couldn't get back into the museum as she didn't have her ticket (the guide had them all!). Some people started getting rather grumbly, but then the guide eventually emerged and tried to do a head count with people moving all over the place, people from other groups joining us, people going wandering off, people announcing that some were already back on the coach... He concluded we were still two people short so headed back into the museum to look for them while we continued waiting in the cold and some passengers started moaning more and more. Eventually he emerged with the final two gentlemen, who got a telling off from their wives, and we got back on the coach. It was now 12.00 and we were due back at the ship at 12.30 but had one more stop to make - at a local restaurant for some refreshments, which no one wanted to miss.
We drove towards the restaurant and from what we could gather, the driver (who spent 50% max of the time watching the road, and the remaining 50% waving at other drivers, pretty women, and babies in other vehicles!) missed the turning. They drove on, urgently discussing in Spanish an alternate route to the restaurant through the various winding and often one way streets, and in the end decided it would be easier for us to walk. The driver therefore reversed around a corner, knocking off his wing mirror in the process, and then stopped in the middle of the street to let everyone out, much to the disgust of the van driver who was trying to get past him. When the last person got off, he drove back forward to let the van though, knocking over a street sign in the process!
Our guide then announced we would be walking four blocks to the restaurant (he didn't specify how long a block was...) but not to worry because only one of the blocks was uphill! We headed off through many of the narrow streets, and having survived the uphill climb we then walked downhill for a very long time before finally getting to the restaurant. I loved it, as we got to see lots more pretty houses and got a bit of extra exercise, but many of the group were not amused! They calmed down a bit when we got to the restaurant at about 12.30 and were offered a free drink (more of the lemony alcoholic 'pisco' drink) and a snack (a huge empanada filled with meat, cheese and vegetables). JL managed to get himself 2 glasses of wine instead! The escort was getting rather agitated though as one couple were on another tour in the afternoon so were supposed to be back in port by 1.00! Someone from the restaurant then came out and apologised as they had run out of empanadas (I think they had dropped a tray or something) so the final table didn't have any - they were offered a cheese sandwich instead, but managed to negotiate a glass of wine as an alternative!
We finally left the restaurant just before 1.00, with our guide who seemed to have bought his lunch there and was carrying it in 2 huge bags, and our ever more stressed escort, and had to walk to find our coach again. We came to the top of one of the funiculars and the guide said "Right, we are now going to catch the.... Ah. It seems it is out of order. Sorry. We'll have to walk down a few stairs then..." We then proceeded to walk down the longest staircase I have ever seen from the top of the huge hill to the bottom, with people groaning and grumbling and shivering all the way. At the bottom our coach was waiting (thankfully or else I think there would have been an uprising!) - we hopped on and he drove like the clappers back to the port, through several red lights, waving at a few more women on the way, until we screeched to a halt at the terminal at about 1.20. The couple going on the afternoon tour rushed from our bus into their next bus which luckily hadn't gone yet, the escort got out red faced filling in her complaint form already, and most people got out grumbling. I however gave the guide what I think was his only tip, as I had certainly had one of my most memorable, unpredictable, and fun-filled excursions for a long time, plus we got an extra hour for free! :-)
I found a shop in the terminal selling postcards, stamps and magnets. We then proceeded through the various security arrangements in the terminal, joined a queue alongside lots of new passengers who were joining the ship today, got the shuttle bus back to the ship and went for lunch!
I didn't have the energy to go through all that again to get off the ship for the afternoon so instead we chilled out on board, I bought another Internet package as there was a a special offer today, wrote some postcards, spoke to my dad, had some afternoon tea (mmmmmm!) and got ready for dinner. We went to the Crows Nest for a while as we had hoped to watch the sailaway. JL had a cocktail and I did some of the jigsaw they have there while we were waiting. By 7.00 we'd had enough of waiting for the ship to set sail so we went to dinner, where an announcement was made that the departure was delayed and we'd be there at least another hour. After dinner we went to the Welcome on Board show for all the new passengers which introduced the speakers and activities for the next sector of the cruise (JL and I are both excited about some of the upcoming events), and then went to bed exhausted! The ship was still in port when we went to sleep - more on that tomorrow!
[JL: we are heading into the Pacific to Easter Island and Tahiti, and will be at sea for the next 10 days, so the Internet may be less reliable, also the satellite feed to the English Premiership :-( ]
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