Burning the Inheritance

Valparaiso is a city of about 300,000 (1,000,000 in the metropolitan area) 1-1/2 hours west of Santiago on the Pacific coast of Chile. While it has a reputation for being a fairly dangerous city, we found it to be incredibly welcoming and friendly for the most part (there are some areas to avoid).

Street Art – Valparaiso is probably best known for its street art and, while we have seen some other cities with pretty impressive street art, Valparaiso lived up to the hype.

Pablo Neruda House – On our last day, we took a walk up an innumerable number of steps from our apartment up the hillside to the Valparaiso house of renowned Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. The house was an amazing eclectic assemblage of found items and art as well as some original mosaics by Neruda’s artist wife. It reminded us a lot of a similarly eclectic house created by an architect friend of ours in Haddon Heights, New Jersey.

We have come to the end of our Central and South American journey. We had hoped to continue on to Peru and Machu Picchu, however civil unrest has led to our rethinking that plan. We have been on the road for two months now and while we continue to struggle with our overstuffed carry ons and backpacks, we are settling into the process of arriving and departing a little more easily. We will be pros at this by the time we come back home! Stay tuned for the next continent…