Ecuador, Peru - Galapagos, Machu Picchu and more...2014: Monday 20.10.14

Alarm woke me from a deep sleep – eventually! It’s weird cos at altitude, it was always a light sleep so it was actually easier to wake up and not feel shitty.

Breaky and off to Valparaiso, a coastal town about 70 miles from Santiago. This required a longer trip on the Metro (underground trains, which actually run on tyres on tracks, not metal wheels, a much smoother, quieter ride. Weird being underground in such a seismic city) for 18 stations, then a 90 minutes bus to Valparaiso.

Monday morning, was a very different picture in our area of El Golfo and on the Metro, there were people EVERYWHERE, thankfully the direction we were travelling was not as busy, we were the salmon swimming upstream. We were on the metro by 8.50 and on the bus to Valparaiso by 9.25. The freeway was great, out of the city (we were already on the edge with the metro) and we were quickly passing through countryside, where we could see, grapevines, oranges and olives, plus other things we couldn’t recognise.

On the bus and off we go.

Again more Eucalyptus.

A church in Valparaiso, a bit wrecked, not sure
why.

Station/ticket office for the trolley bus.

The bus depot in Valparaiso was at the opposite end of town to the things we wanted to see, we walked a fair distance through the streets, which resembled much more our shopping strips, interesting array of buildings and a lot of housing etc up on steep hills behind the coast.

Lots of street art.

This was on the Greek school in one of the main
streets.

Trolley bus.

A lot of sea themed statues, as
this was and is a main port city.

A great yellow house, high on the
hill.

Kiltro - the term for stray/street dogs all through
Chile, the people don't own them but treat them
very well.

We finally came across the first ascensor – after a coffee and cake break – Ascensor Concepcion opened in 1883. This was basically a box that ascended up rails on about a 45 degree plus angle, a weighted thing as the two cars moved in opposition, there were huge wheels/pulleys in the engine house, up to the Paseo Gervansoni above. Here there was housing and old buildings and accommodation, also a great view overlooking the bay. Some lovely magnets and we found some good street art, for which Valparaiso is famous.

Back down the ascensor – pretty ramshackle, but a great experience. Cost varied between 100 and 300 pesos each way – well worth not walking UP those hills. Further walking brought us to Plaza Sotomayor – with a beautiful blue Chilean Armada building on one side, reminded me of Mum's cameo brooches. There was also a pink building on another side and an impressive statue, relating to the port and naval history, I think.

That tells the story.

The way up.

Inside the wooden box.

View from the top.

Liked the clock tower and Chilean
Armada behind.

A window.

The streets of Valparaiso up the top.

He was blowing colours to the left and...

they morphed into a lizard.

Street art.

More, clever use of the stairss

Up closer to that yellow building it was actually
the Brighton Hotel.

More of Init Castro's work. He lives in Valparaiso
I think.

Rusty roofs, fabulous windows.

feels a bit like playschool's round window x 3.

One of the Paseo's at the top.

Steet art.

The workings.

Looking down, you can see the other car coming
up as we go down.

The blue roof of Armada de Chile
building. It was hard to really
capture the beauty of it.

Here's one I pinched off the web.

Up close.

We went to have a look at the port and got a bargain 15 000 peso boat ride around the harbour with Carlos in his boat Normita II, we sidled up to a buoy with HUGE sea lions lolling about on it, saw Chilean Naval ships, a huge ship being repaired in the floating dry dock, other container ship being loaded as well as a rough overview of Valparaiso from Carlos – all in stilted Spanish/English – I think we got MOST of the picture. A 20-30 minute cruise, was all good.

Here she comes, the Nornita II,
just for us.

Thanks Carlos, nice pic.

Huge Sea Lion.

There they are just sunning on the buoy.

Huge ship in floating dry dock.

The bouy, another one has just jumped up.

Carlos

A little of Valparaiso.

Boat art?

Me in charge.

Suzie has a go.

Then a late 3.30 lunch at Café Melbourne, met a lovely couple from Warnambool doing 4.5 months in South America.

After lunch we did Ascensor Cordillera, where we warned 3 times about this being a dangerous area, one of these warnings was a policeman, needless to say, we didn’t wander far from ascensor and returned down to street level soon after.

View from top of Cordillera.

These things are old, many no longer run at all, lots
of earthquake damage.

Then a young man, who was checking and monitoring the chaotic bus network helped us out and put us on a local bus to the other end of town, where we wanted to do another Ascensor and check out Barrio Polanco – a graffiti barrio.

Granny with her plunger. Reminds
me of a kids book, can't recall
which one.

This is the pretty schmick local bus our young man
put us on. We were both carefully tracking our route
on our maps, but the driver, was great and indicated
where we needed to get off. Great service.

Ascensor Polanco was a bit different again, we walked into a long, cold stone tunnel which led into side of the hill, then a lift up into a tower which stopped three stories up into the suburb. Some great street art in this steep suburb. We walked back down the higgledy, piggedly steps/paths, taking pics of the graffiti all the way.

The ticket man at start of tunnel,
ground level.

Mmmmm, what are we letting ourselves in for?

In we go.

Up the top, it was just, photo after photo.

Looking down on a concrete slide from top of
Ascensor tower.

This one was quite small, on the
gutter.

Amazing talent.

and no damage or graffiti.

The local bus had brought us back to the right end of town to get to the bus depot for bus trip home, so we walked back via the new Congress building.

New Congress Building (Parliament House.)

The other end of that wrecked
church we saw on way in.

At the station, we tried to get our open ticket sorted, the girl sent us inside, so we rocked up to the bus almost ready to depart, only to be pointed to a Turbus counter INSIDE, one of the fellas in his high vis vest, was very helpful, such a nice, smile, he took us to the desk, told the man what we wanted and with much gesticulation and smiles he got us our seat allocation and onto the bus as it was rolling out of the station just after 5.30. He got us top deck front seats, magic view all the way home. He was waving and smiling at us with many thumbs up as we departed the depot – wish we had time to tip him, he was great.