Travel Destination Review

Route 68: Political blots on the beautiful landscape

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I took a tour from Santiago to the port city of Valparaíso, 115 km north-west of the Chilean capital. The highway (Route 68) was a good quality road and we made good time getting out to the Pacific. Valparaíso’s historic fame rests on its integral role as a port, and shipping is still a key industry, although it’s importance today is not what it was strategically in the nineteenth century before the Panama Canal was constructed. Beyond the town’s central plaza lies Prat Wharf which is still a busy area for shipping and docklands.

Valpa’s kaleidoscope of colour!

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Valparaíso, or as the residents of the city (the Porteños) call it, ‘Valpo’ for short, is a fascinating place to walk around. One of the highlights is the street art and distinctive buildings, a hotch-potch of different-coloured houses, many with brightly-painted murals on their walls. A quirky aspect of Valparaíso is that you find very ordinary and humble dwellings (even rundown ones) right next to more grand and ornate buildings.

Palacio Buburizza

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Up on the heights of Cerro Alegre (literally “cheerful hill” in Spanish) visitors can view some unusual and quite distinctive examples of domestic architecture, such as Palacio Baburizza, formerly a large rambling art nouveau palatial home (now a fine arts museum). Also up on Cerro Alegre, in a kind of unofficial Croatian sector of the city, is the 1861-built Casa Antoncich, a dwelling which survived major earthquakes in 1906, 1985 and 2010, something Valparaíso is prone to given its proximity to the Peru-Chile oceanic trench. Cerro Bellavista is another part of the hilly city celebrated for its array of luminously bright murals.

City ascensor

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Topographically, Valparaíso is characterised by very steep hills surrounding the docks and shoreline. As a consequence, funiculars or as they are called here, ascensores (literally ‘elevator’, these are cable cars on very steeply sloping rail tracks) are the standard transportation options for residents in the hills to ease their descent from houses high on the hills to Plaza Sotomayor, the city Centro and the port✼. There are some 26 ascensores servicing Valparaíso. It was fun to descend rapidly to sea-level on one of these funiculars, very quick and costing only a nominal sum (about 10 Chilean pesos).

Any planned visit to Chile should factor in at the very minimum a day trip to Valparaíso, otherwise tourists will be missing out on a charming and very fascinating part of the country.

PostScript: A touch of Australia at 33° S, 71° W?
The city centre, Plaza Sotomayor, includes the Chilean naval headquarters (Armada de Chile building), the large monument to naval hero Arturo Prat in the middle. Diagonally opposite the Armada is Cafe Melbourne, which promises “Melbourne café-style food and coffee” (is Melbourne so distinctive in food and coffee from that in other Australian cities, I know Melburnians think so but really?) The name will probably nonetheless engender some curiosity from tourists from Victoria. A further pointer on the Australiana theme, the visit to the port of Valporaíso reminded me of the city’s other nebulous connection with the ‘Land Downunder’ – Australia’s third prime minister, John Christian (Chris) Watson, was born in Valparaiso of Irish-Chilean parents, an occurrence that was entirely one of happenstance!

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✼ and make their return ascent achievable!