30/04/04- 04/05/04 Valparaíso

Although we arrived in very stressful circumstances we were helped out by the friendliest and kindest person in the tourist information centre who helped us sort everything out with the police and even got her family to phone our previous hotel to ensure that we hadn´t left everything there. After that we had a couple of hours sitting around the police station and then found a hotel and explored the city. The city is built on hundreds of hills so everyone gets round on funicular railways which makes it quite fun. We stayed in the nicest part of the city, not only because it had a café that knew how to make a proper cup of tea but also because it had a fantastic view of the habour. A couple of the days that we were there we took the bus to Vina del Mar a posh resort which is pretty much a suburbs of Valparaiso. Very nice, but a bit too cold to sunbathe. Had a picnic on the beach (with a rabid dog) and watched the sun set that kind of thing.


For anyone going to Valparaiso, watch out for the comic strip published by the Chilean tourist board and distrubted free everywhere. The main character is an American traveller who explores all the sites (and shows diagrams of how the lifts work etc.), constantly called a 'gringo' by every local he encounters, finds love a couple of times and very suddenly treads in a dog turd (of which there are many in Valparaiso)and when he is left without a girl he goes to a filth bar. Well done to the Sernatur, Chile's government run tourist service!

Once again don't have any pictures at the moment but here are some:

http://www.valparaisochile.cl/paseos.htm

Oh, and we saw some little kid trying to relieve a lady shopping of her necklace.