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- Stu in Valparaiso
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- The Port
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- I’m bout to be robbed
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- Joe Chris and a Fish
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- Lunch at Fishmarket
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- Pablo’s House at Isla Negra
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- Port, again
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- Valpo from a Cerro
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- Old houses in Valpo
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- Row houses on a hill
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- Mas Valpo
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- Stuart, Post-Robbery
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- Up a hill
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- Evening
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- the road to Pablo’s house
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- Stu on the road
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- Stu and Co. on Pablo’s Lawn
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- Fuzzy Lunch
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- Paila Marina
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- A Narrow Street
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- Valpo is thin
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- Bright Valpo
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- I was there
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- View from Pablos bedroom window
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- View from Pablos Porch
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- To la Sebastiana
I have left Santiago, on the road to Valparaiso, which I have since left for a smaller beach town in the Chico Norte called La Serena. The road from Santiago runs almost due West to the Pacific. The valley floor runs flat to the Coastal mountains that you can see on a clear day in Santiago. The road passes through a tunnel. When I rode through the tunnel, I left a gray, drizzly sky and came out the other end under an empty blue sky. The coastal mountains are small. The valleys on the way are flat bottomed except in the center of the range, but the hills are steep and pointed on top rather than softly rounded. The grass is very green in winter, covered in scrub or with trees that appear in three kinds: dark needled and thick trunked pines, palm trees, and tall, slender trees that have limp, dusty leaves, bark that hangs in strips and brances that turn upward with the trunk. I believe these last are Eucalyptus. The foothills of the Coastal range run in rows all the way to the coast. Valparaiso built on the western slope of the last hill. The flat bottom along the Bay of Valparaiso has the port and the tall, colonial boulevard buildings of the port merchants, banks and military offices. From the Plazas set along the Avenidas of Indipendence and O´Higgins, cobble stone streets wind up the the “cerros,” the folds in the hillside that form the neighborhoods of Valpo. Between the streets on the cerros narrow alleys cut between buildings and steep staircases lead up the hill faces that turn the roads.
The buildings on the Cerros are, as a result of the geography, all out of order. The appear above and below, spaced on the green hillside where even cantilevering in impossible. The buildings are mixed colonial, victorian, with some art deco and a very rough moderism thrown in. Some look very German with heavy, carved wood detail. Many are clad in corrugated iron, iron that dents and rusts and generally gives the town a hastily built air. The buildings are all painted bright colors, even the newer poured concrete ones higher up the hills so, in the daytime, the city is a jumble of colored blocks. The city is bright, but also crumbling and cracked and needs a wash—but that is a part of the appeal.
Unfortuanentaly, the city is plagued with petty crime. Fortuanately for me, I was staying at a hostel run by a very conscientious and knowledgable German. He gave me a map, with a route sketched out through the neighborhood where I was staying, on the swanky hill. He marked out the neighborhoods I should avoid at night. I was ready for dodgy neighborhoods, I had only the necessities in my bag: sweatshirt, guidebook, notebook, film. Nevertheless, I am a cautious traveler, so I followed the route he mapped out, camera at my neck, day bag on my back.
Within the hour, about three in the afternoon, I was robbed in the alley by the hostel. Three kids got my camera and my bag. I spent the rest of the day replacing the items I had lost. For my old Walmart sweatshirt, I bought a jacket at a second hand store, replete with stains on the front and a rip in the back. For my toy camera, an even cheaper plastic camera. I had not been hurt, though we had scuffled and they had punched and kicked me. I left with only scrapes on my elbows and a stiff knee, and a lingering anger that I had not been able to hurt the little bastards more. I was a little jumpy, but walking around in public for a while calmed me down.
The next day I was truly ready to explore. I had a cheap camera, no backpack to attract attention, and the jacket of a homeless man. Also, I had two companions. No more rookie mistakes. Then, around three o´clock, under a sun so bright I was squinting, an arm grabbed around my neck, flashing. It released me and I fell, to see two kids, one with a knife. Demanded my camera–they must have seen me take a picture with it and assumed it was digital because all gringos are rich–but before I could even stand up, Joe had turned on them and they stepped back. Joe and the kid with the knife stared at each other for a second, until Chris whistled and they ran. I had a knife held to my throat. Now I was truly on edge. So were my companions Chris and Joe, even if Chris still thought it was funny to grab me by the shoulder from behind on our way back to the hostel from the attempted robbery. We decided that we needed a drink to calm down and celebrate. “U.S.A. 1, Chile 0,” said Chris. “Well, for me it´s actually U.S.A. 1, Chile 1. But at least I´m batting 500 now.” So we sat down in what turned out to be the oldest bar in Valpo and drank. A lot. On my first day, when I had my bag stolen, replacing the sweatshirt with a jacket cost me six thousand pesos and the camera cost me three. On my second day, when I didn´t lose anything at all, celebrating the victory cost me twelve thousand on our way to a 35,000 peso bar tab. So I went over budget in Valpo, but more because of our succesful prevention of robery than because of robbery itself.
Despite the nonsense, though, it is a wonderful town. The rest of the inhabitants were at least polite, and often friendly. They eat good seafood and drink beer. And they live perched on steep hillsides that lean over the Plazas day and night toward the Pacific, which is their greatest attribute of all.
