Let's go to the beach, beach. Let's go get away

Can you guess where I went this last weekend? If you guessed the port city of Valparaíso and beach town of Viña del Mar then you´d be correct. Yup, I was invited to sail away for a weekend excursion. I headed out Friday almost directly after work and came back to dear Santiago at 1AM on Monday morning just in time to sleep a couple of hours before work. The actual traveling portion of the trip will be discussed in a later entry. How was the weekend, you ask? Well let me show and tell you.

Blending in with the street sign

Here we are in Valparaíso. Most of the city is built on a hill. As you can see pictured above, one will encounter lots of stairs and slanted pathways while touring the area. They have elevators that go diagonally a la those of the Luxor in Las Vegas. I took a quick walk up a billion and two stairs to check out this quiet area. I was able to see some hooligans artists spray painting a wall nearby where the picture was taken. Hopefully their project turned out nice. I think they were painting a bird over some existing artwork.

From the top of the hill, you can see the cargo and cruise ships hanging out in the bay. It´s a really busy place for commerce and tourism. At any given time during my stay there were at least five large (ginormical, actually) barges waiting to dock.

a cute little house behind some plants

I´m not sure what kind of people live in the houses in this area. The very few people I saw walking around were either tourists from England or visitors from Santiago. Perhaps the climb to the top of the hill exhausts the residents and they chose to leave as infrequently as possible.

a blue building

Here´s a picture of the town square right by the harbor. A Celebrity cruise ship was parked in the water this day, and there were a lot of people out and about taking pictures. When one goes to Valparaíso, it is almost obligatory that they check out these statues and have some seafood. I went with the flow and did both. After taking some pictures you see below, I had some sort of fish at the restaurant on the right side of the picture below. It´s the white building with umbrellas outside. Go there. Everyone else does.

Check out what else was happening in this area that day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewCPTxzlIUo 

Resting at the monument

Here I am hanging out is the aforementioned statue area. It´s the "Monumento a los heroes de Iquique". or "The Heros of Iquique Monument¨. Chilean peeps, correct me if I´m wrong but I believe that Iquique is a town in the north of the country that originally belonged to Peru. The people depicted in this statue played a major part in winning that land. Apparently they lost the specific battle that inspired the monument, but they got the job done in the end. I forget the guys´ names and don´t have pictures of them. If you´re really interested, come visit me in Santiago and we´ll take a trip over there to check it out again.

Friend, Miguel posing with one of the hero peeps

Ok, so this picture above didn´t turn out quite right. It was supposed to seem like the statue guy was attacking Miguel like the infamous Ronald McDonald slap happy pics. Instead, it looks like the statue is in front of him and he´s looking down on it. In reality, the guy is larger than life size.

Checking out the bell

That´s me above just hanging out in the little monument area. You can see how big the guys are from here. 

Monumento hereos de Iquique

The beach at Viña del Mar

more populated area of the beach

Even the street dogs liked to come to the beach. Some would just sit to listen and watch. Some would run around playing with others. In the picture above, you can see some of the cargo ships in the distance awaiting their turn to dock.

Harbor at Valparaíso

Aside from having a beach and a harbor, Viña had at least two shopping malls. They were quite big. Well, they were a lot larger than anything in Wyoming. I went on a Saturday and saw a lot of sailors hanging out. At first, I thought they were dressed up for a performance or that they just liked the clothes cuz that´s what kids were into these days. Nope, they were real life sailors, and lots of them. Silly me. I was in a real life port city after all. Too bad I didn´t get a picture of them.

Some nice apartments at Viña

Viña also has a casino near the water. I would have gone to check it out, but I was pulled back because you have to pay to get in. There was a cover charge for a lot of the bathrooms too. If anyone is thinking about an entrepreneur possibility in Chile, come on down and open up a fancy private bathroom on the beach. You could probably get like $1.50- $2.00 USD and have a line most of the day.

Miguel at the beach

Along the beach was a boardwalk with a lot of activities going on. There were people relaxing, a turbo kick routine being taught (which made me sad that I couldn´t join in), people skateboarding, guys working out, and kids playing. By accident, I stepped into the path of a small child on a tricycle. One of the wheels bounced over my foot and she ended up tumbling over. Oopsie doopsie. I don´t know if her caregiver saw me wreck her, but they did see me helping her up. No one sued me, so I guess we´re good.

On the way back from the beach, I got to try out a new concept that I hadn´t heard of before - a disco cafe. It´s like a regular restaurant that serves food and coffee during the day. At night, it´s turned into a dance club. It was a nice experience. They even had fancy stuff like hydroponic lettuce. I had that with some chicken. Yum.

Speaking of food experiences, I also got to try out my first street vendor that night. I was so hungry and it was the only option at 5am. I learned that a "completo" is a hot dog. What a weird name. Also, I learned the meaning of "italiano". A person can request their food be prepared this way if they want avocado,  mayonnaise, and tomato. The colors are green, white, and red just like the Italian flag. Finally something makes sense in this place.


Well, that was pretty much the weekend.This was less of a cultural lesson and more of a review of my weekend. The next blog entry should be more educational. Stay tuned.

bonus - Them silly people wearing a black belt with brown shoes