Part 2: Valparaíso y Viña del Mar

This is going to be a very photo-heavy post because spoiler alert: Valparaíso is GORGEOUS.

     When we arrived in Valparaíso on Sunday evening, tired and hungry, we had $4000 pesos to our name, and no way to get more til the following morning. I know what your'e thinking. "4000 pesos? You're RICH!" You would be wrong. Because Chilean money is crazy... and that amounts to about US$8.50

     I'm still not sure how it happened, but somehow we bought enough food to feed the four of us and it was an EASTER MIRACLE! :]

     The next morning we actually got to see Valparaíso in the daylight. And let me tell you... it is my new favorite city. It is LLENO de colores y arte. You can't walk a block without seeing some sort of painting on a wall or stairway (or anything else you could possible paint). 

     Valparaíso is snuggled up on the coast and thus has excellent views. It's also quite hilly! We spent the day walking around with our new Brazilian friends we'd met at the hostel. It was one of my favorite days of the trip!

Some Valparaisian street art.  

I SEE THE MAR.

   

     One of the most iconic things in Valparaíso is their "ascensores." They're like public elevators that cost a few cents. They're a great way to skip the hills, and give awesome views of the city!

Ascensores. 

     One of my favorite parts of Valparaíso: somehow we managed to get a $6 private boat tour of the bay! The weather was perfect and clear and it was SO pretty! You could see all the way to Viña del Mar.
     Our "tour guide" was absolutely hilarious, and we got one of the boys to get up on the bow and sing "I'm on a Boat" (he was the only one who had flippy-floppies...)

     Our boat went within about three feet of a herd of sea lions just chillin' on some boats/pier. Who knew there were sea lions in Chile?? They were SO funny looking (and smelled terrible...). In Spanish they're called sea wolfs, but if you look at the picture on the left... that just looks like a dog to me! Our tour guide had named some of them. You know, Hugo Chavez, Barack, and Michelle. 

     After the boat ride we went looking for some seafood! We found a nice restaurant... well it must have been nice because our Spanish vocabularies were not big enough to encompass all the seafood on it's menu! We just picked things at random and YUM. I ended up with this crab.. lobster.. pancake.. thing. It was delicious though so I didn't ask questions!



    While we were in Valparaíso we also went on a tour of Pablo Neruda's house (he's a very famous Chilean poet) and it was SO COOL! Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures... but it was five stories and decorated with the most eclectic and unique things. I definitely would not mind living there, con vistas al mar. 

     We'd planned to have a beach day when we headed over to Viña del Mar, but suddenly the weather was cold and dreary and we hardly had ganas to even leave the hostel! So I don't have very many pictures, but honestly Viña wasn't a whole lot to look at compared to Valpo. Still a cute city, just not nearly as picturesque!  We took a walk down the beach one night, watched some surfers (they must've been FREEZING!), and that's about all of our Viña activities! (I had to spend some time writing an essay at the hostel... because school is still a thing, unfortunately.)