Valparaiso/Vina del Mar/Isla Negra

The weekend after Saltos, the group traveled north along the coast. We stopped first at Isla Negra where chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner, Pablo Neruda, owned, well I guess it's more appropriate to say had built, a house. It was quite impressive. No pictures allowed inside as it a museum filled with rarities and collectibles collected throughout the poet's life. The house is constructed loosely around the structure of a ship. Low doorways and narrow steep stairs. There were numerous figureheads from the bows of ships, mostly wood-carved women. There were bottles of all different intricate shapes and lively colorations. Ash trays, masks of indigenous peoples of south america, various islands, and africa, ships in bottles, an impressive and somewhat terrifying array of large dead insects, many beetles, scorpions, and some butterflies and moths. The last room contained truly amazing quantities of insane sea shells, most of which I had never even imagined possible. In the same room was the full unicorn of a narwhal. I touched it. It was cool.

Neruda's study and bedroom were the most impressive for me. The study: an old ship's desk Neruda found one day in the surf of the beach a mere hundred meters or so from the house, carefully stained and polished to a bright new sheen, with carefully arranged utensils facing a wall of floor to ceiling windows looking out on that surf rolling in with constant, silent roars. It would be quite a place to work. I imagine It was very conducive to the poet's creative impulses. The bedroom: A large bed, arranged diagonally on a wood floor, more floor to ceiling windows wrapping around the corner at the foot of the bed. Flowers, jagged rocks, a tree off to the side, and the immensity of the ocean. Imagine waking up to that every morning.

From there we continued on to Vina del Mar to our hotel, Hotel O'Higgins (named after liberator Bernardo O'Higgins, of course). Vina del Mar and Valparaiso are neighboring cities forming a large metropolitan area. The cities are basically an incredible array of colorful houses cascading down a number of hills. Valparaiso is a port town, Chile's most important port, funneling most of its exports out to sea. It is very similar to how I imagine San Fransisco, or how I've seen it in pictures and movies, etc. It has some amazing old buildings and a vibrant bohemian feel. Vina del Mar is a more modern spot, resort town class. The beach is... sandy. Oh, and beautiful, and it was warm and sunny, and I saw a crab.

We were there only two nights. Four people to a hotel room. Five guys and 18 girls. We had dinner in a nice restaurant, were serenaded, and some of us prayed that the appetizer we just ordered was salmon with eggs, and not in fact salmon eggs (salmon stuffed deviled egg like things as it turned out... whew). The first night, we went to a bar, a little mexican joint with live-ish music. (a guy, a computer, and a microphone he sometimes used). The second day we ascended a hill (cerro) in an ascensor (a cross between a ski lift and a train car) and wandered around Cerro Concepcion, losing money quickly amongst the craft booths, snapping photos of graffiti and buildings, eating lunch in a cafe. That night I was forced to go to a dance club by persistent roomies. I do not dance well. The final day, we beached ourselves and watched the sun set. Pretty amazing. The people present exhibit A: photos of beach, buildings, sun, crab, and the like. It was an awesome trip.