September 24, 2018

September 24, 2018

We are flying home today but our flight is not until very late. So I couldn't help but try and squeeze in one more World Heritage site. I booked the four of us on a tour to Valparaiso on the Pacific coast seventy miles west of Santiago, Chile.

A van picked us up at our hotel and drove west from Santiago’s central valley through a tunnel under the coastal mountains arriving in Vina del Mar. We mostly got a driving tour of this resort city by the sea. We did make one stop, humorously for us, to see an Easter Island Moai. Outside a museum, it is one of only a handful that have left Rapa Nui.

We then drove to next door Valparaiso, a major port for Chile, Santiago, and even Argentina. A super tunnel under the Andes is in the planning stages to improve traffic and avoid the often closed mountain road. Thousands of shipping containers and several gantry cranes line the port. Lots of Chilean Navy ships are anchored in the bay.

Valparaiso has little flat land. Most of the city rises vertically above the bay. Its houses and narrow streets climb the steep hillsides. The World Heritage Historic Area was preserved when the port city economy was crippled with the opening of the Panama Canal, and the rich fled to tonier Vina del Mar. Today Valparaiso is a hilly labyrinth of narrow alleys, stairways, colorful buildings, and street art. Artistic Graffiti must be in the South American DNA as we saw lots of it also in Rio and the La Boca section of Buenos Aires. Even stairs are painted here. One looks like a giant piano keyboard.

To help the public get around, especially those of us not aging well, Valparaiso has sixteen funicular lifts to move people up and down the hilly city. Most were built over a hundred years ago. The one we rode has a very cool antique turnstile.

Interestingly Valparaiso has a volunteer fire department apparently with each ethnic neighborhood having its own station. We passed a Hebrew fire truck and an English station house.

On the return journey we stopped at a hilltop winery in the Casablanca valley to learn about Chilean wines. Chile is a major wine producer and the fifth largest exporter. The colder, foggier coastal regions are well suited to white wines while the central valley produces reds. In particular Chile is famous for the Carmenere grape, a relative of Cabernet, that became extinct in France during the 1867 Phylloxera plague. Confusion with Merlot and Chile’s geographical isolation allowed it to survive here. Always the doubter, I insisted on tasting it to ensure it is a fine wine.

The tour drops us back at the hotel. We pickup our luggage, head to the airport and begin the long process to return home. We arrive in Tucson early the next morning.

Both Aimee and I liked this trip better than we had imagined. While curious about South America, I had some trepidation, and I wasn't really expecting any great history, interesting culture, or awesome scenery. I was wrong on every count. We Americans knows precious little about our southern neighbors. In this world of information overload, news about South America doesn't often make the cut. We need to visit Argentina's beautiful Patagonia region while the country is on sale.