We were picked up at 9am for a private tour taking us from Santiago to Valparaiso passing through Casablanca valley wine region and Vina del Mar. The one stop we made in the Casablanca valley wasn’t at a winery, which we saw a lot of as we drove passed, but at the Supermercado del Vino, literally a wine supermarket. There was a massive array of wines for sale, but only one stand that was actually tasting local wines. It was a bit disappointing, but we still managed to leave with two bottles.
Vino del Mar was the beach resort that Santiagoites escape to, but it was bloody cold, worse than a Dunedin summer day. It was full of high rise apartments and most of the beach you weren’t allowed to swim at. The place is famous for it’s flower clock, that we didn’t bother to stop and take a photo of, and also for having a Moai from Easter Island. There is supposed to be a good museum to visit where the Moai sits, but we couldn’t be bothered dealing with all of the tourists that had arrived in bus loads at the same time as us.
Our guide took us into Valparaiso and supposedly showed us around, but what she showed us made me wonder what was so good. Once we headed uphill, you could begin to see what people had been talking about. After we were dropped at our hotel and settled in, we went for an explore.
The stone streets ducked and dived up and down the hills with lots of brightly coloured houses and graffiti and street art everywhere. There were cute little shops with locally made clothing, jewellery and crafts, lots of restaurants and cafes for cake. Down on the flat is where it wasn’t so interesting, but there were the funny trolebuses you could take for a loop around and little funiculars that you could catch back up the different hills.
We found a street art walking tour, a Grafreeti tour, because the tour was paid in tips, therefore free if that’s what you thought it was worth. Jake, our guide, was fantastic and told us so much history about graffiti and street art and the development of it and the techniques used. He gave us further explanations about the different pieces and the stories behind them. When new street art appears they try to contact the artist so they can get the story behind the piece and use that information in the tour. Some areas are designated as ‘schools of graffiti’ where young kids can develop their skills and there was an open sky museum, that we visited after finishing the tour. A couple of dogs joined us for the tour and Jake told us that there are a few different dogs that will join the tour each time and if he could teach them English then they’d be able to take the tour themselves.
In the evenings we made the most of the lovely garden at the front of our hotel to enjoy the wines we had bought on the way. The staff in the hotel were lovely about it, getting glasses and opening the wine for us and I think they quite enjoyed chatting with us about different wines to try.
Again, we were in search of good food and Valparaiso didn’t disappoint. There was an amazingly decorated Cafe de Pintor that did a great set menu. The graffiti tour finished at Altamira, an artisan brewery that made great burgers as well as good beer. Our favourite though was Apice restaurant, which was around the corner from our hotel. They could only do 16 covers in an evening, the open kitchen was tiny and they had three staff. The menu consisted of two entrees, two mains and two desserts, and they use all local produce and change the menu every three months. Everything looked delicious so we decided to order all of the options and share. It was such a lovely place, great service, fantastic food and very friendly, I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.
After the false start, Valparaiso showed us why it is such a great place and you could explore it for many more days than we had there.
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