Valparaiso and New Year's!

Ask any Chilean and they will tell you that Valparaiso is the place to be on New Year's Eve! So we went back to the city for three nights including New Year's to see what happens.

sash windows just like home!

Great Britain Avenue

We stayed in an excellent hostel with a great view across the bay, run by a group of really laid-back chilenos - jazz in the morning with homemade brown bread and fruit for breakfast, and reggae in the evenings. The hostel has a big metal spiral staircase through the atrium, going up to the gallery where the rooms are, topped by a lamp-post.

We'll get onto New Year's shortly, but first we went to see Valpo's cemeteries. We posted a distant photo of one of the cemeteries in our previous Valpo post, but this time we decided to go and see them up close. Photos not allowed but here's some from outside. 

The Protestant Cemetery - for non-Catholic Brits, Germans etc

In the photo above you can see a couple of the family mausolea that characterise these cemeteries. Some are huge and very ornate, like small chapels, others just like a large plain chest of drawers - but with sarcophagi rather than drawers. The most interesting things about the cemeteries are the names of the buried and the varying states of repair. On the first, it's possible to find many English, German and Dutch names on the graves which, along with the obvious architectural clues elsewhere in the city, give a good idea of the immigrant communities that contributed to Valpo's population. 

Most of the graves/ crypts we saw had internments dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with some as late as the early 1980's. Some of the mausolea were in pristine condition and obviously visited regularly, while others were in terrible repair. In several we could see inside to a coffin, and in one an eery torn bag of bones. Much of this is due to the earthquake but some is clearly many years of neglect - inevitable in a city of immigrants fallen on hard times due to changing trade patterns (the Panama Canal almost finished Valpo as a working port). Many families that were 100 or so years ago wealthy enough to build these fabulous crypts would either have lost their fortunes and/ or be long gone elsewhere.  

Sort of related to this, we were in Vina del Mar again also during this trip (beach on New Year's Day of course!), and a body had been fished out of the sea. On the way back to our hostel we saw the police forensics examining the scene. Probably way too much party on New Year's Eve.  

the small orange thing at the back of the truck is the end of the bodybag...

 On to less sombre matters, here's Struan with a beer and a proper chorrillana.

Chorrillana can involve various things but generally involves a heady combination of griddled beef, sauteed onions, fried eggs and chips. We've had them in Santiago a couple of times, but had been reliably informed that the best, or the real ones, are in Valparaiso as that's where the dish originated. 

We can report that this is true, this beautiful mountain of food is more chips than it's possible for two people to eat in one sitting, topped with thick pieces of griddled beef fillet, and a sort of patty of mixed sauteed onions, scrambled eggs, and melted cheese...

Another food thing that Valpo does really well is onces, which we've mentioned before - afternoon tea, the concept borrowed from English immigrants, but done Chilean style (and inexplicably called "elevenses" if you translate directly).

Here's one we had in a cafe we've been to a few times:

coffee, freshly squeezed apple juice, toast, ham, cheese, rhubarb jam, spicy apricot jam, scrambled egg, chocolate cake...

So, plenty more wandering around Valpo, then New Year's Eve. The highlight is a huge fireworks display which has its focus in Valparaiso but stretches around the bay through Vina del Mar to several towns and beach resorts further north, and includes batteries of fireworks on boats in the harbour.

Firstly we popped down to the port front to see what was going on and found hundreds of Chileans camped out on the quays to get ringside views.

tents, fold-out camping tables...

There was some early music in the main square, which people were enjoying, together with the count-down clock, which was for a while running 2 hours slow until someone noticed...

correct at this time, but shortly before showing as 18:40, which would have been embarrassing later

One obvious difference between New Year's here and in the UK is that it's summer here. This means that it's much more about being outside. Rather than cram themselves into bars the majority of people buy huge stocks of booze from botillerias and find a space in the street to drink and dance, watch the fireworks, and shout "feliz ano nuevo" at each other. We had a drink in a bar before going back up to the hostel for dinner but most places close their doors to the general public and put on an expensive dinner for reservations only. Many people also have a family dinner in their houses, with the parilla outside cooking meat:

the people are inside, this is the pavement

Our hostel put on a great little dinner for all of the guests (about twice as many as the place could actually sleep because people were happy to cram onto the dorm floors just to have somewhere to sleep...) of wraps and kebabs, and pisco sours. It was great to spend the evening with not only Chileans, but also with people from all over the world staying in the hostel. In the hostel we even bumped into someone who we had met in a hostel in our first trip to La Serena. Then everybody went up to the roof terrace - which got too full, so then everybody went up onto the hostel roof - to watch the fireworks!

the city from the hostel roof

hostel guests on the upper roof, and one of the staff cracking out the champagne - woop!

We obviously got loads of photos of the fireworks themselves, here's a video:

...and here's a few pics so you get the idea. It was awesome, but we can't post them all. If you want to look at the other million or so, then click on this link to our online album - it becomes strangely compelling clicking through them after a while...

After that, and finishing the champagne, we went out into the streets to get some atmos'. This was taken at about 3am, in a heaving square above which someone had opened the windows to their apartment and was blasting out some classics on a huge sound system:

It was a great night, and we can totally see why New Year's Eve Valpo style has such a good reputation.

New Year's Day we dragged ourselves out of bed to go to the beach in Vina for the day, along with a huge number of Chileans. Some of the people in the photo above were still there when we walked through the square on the way to the metro in the morning.

big hamster balls for kids to fall over in

Ever stylish Valpo, back in town later we found this beautiful old car:

Once again Valpo was a fantastic place to visit, and fortunately it's not going to be the last time as we will go back to explore the city more and use it as a base to explore a little more of the central coast. For now however, school's out for summer and it's the start of our farther flung travels. Tomorrow we get on a bus to head 10 hours south to a city on the coast called Valdivia, as the start of a trip that will take in the Chilean Lake District, Patagonia in southern Chile and Argentina, the deserts and mountainous altiplano in the far north of Chile and Bolivia, and more Argentina - in some places with various people who are coming over from the UK to visit us. Yay!

We're not sure what we'll be doing about the blog as we won't have time or regular access to a computer to keep posting, at this kind of length at least, while we're on the road.  

Anyway, spare a thought for Anna who will be spending her birthday on the bus south, but we'll find some fun in Valdivia for sure!

chao and feliz ano nuevo!