Valparaiso

I´m here in the coastal city of Valparaiso, just to the west of Santiago. It´s a beautiful sunny spring day, and the hostel has great views of the city and the port. I took an overnight bus from Valdivia, and managed to sleep through most of it. It was time to get out of Valdivia, it reminded me of Dundee, Scotland more than anywhere else. A perfectly nice and prosperous little historic city, but with year-round wind and rain that keeps the town from being very festive. Valparaiso by contrast is bustling, noisy and sunny.
I was up taking photos from one of the hills, until a stocky Navy MP made clear that taking photos of the navy cruisers in the harbor was forbidden. That seemed odd to me, as anyone from a tall building could take the same photo, and it´s not like chile´s naval cruisers have never been photographed before. It´s some bangup counterespionage those MP´s are doing, that´s for sure. When Hugo Chavez tries to invade, he´ll have to do it without firsthand photos from the tourist overlook of those 6 ships in the harbor, thank you very much.

I´m readjusting to the Chilean accent. People in Argentina told me they can´t understand a lot of Chilenos, so it makes me feel a bit better that I´m often at a loss. The dialect is very fast, spoken back in the throat, and loaded with all sorts of changed and invented words. Maybe that´s why Valdivia reminded me of Scotland so much, everyone was unintelligble there too.

Anyhow, I´ll spend the week here and poking around surrounding towns like viña del mar and isla negra. Then for the weekend, I found a half-price ticket on lan.com for easter island. I still can´t believe I´m going, but that´s how I´ll be finishing up the trip. I get back from the island to Santiago on Monday, hang out in the airport for several hours, then start the trip back to DC late monday night.