Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile

Big cities were an adjustment, after the solitude and dryness in the north. However, the bustle and energy revived us in different ways. We first hiked up a hill overlooking Santiago, for our daily exercise, and got great views of the sprawling Santiago metropolis.

Unfortunately, the city was covered with a brown haze, due to recent fires in the surrounding countryside. The next picture shows the path we hiked up Cerro San Cristobal, up 1,000 ft, and shows how there are multiple hills popping up within the city proper.

At the summit of the Cerro (means hill) was a little church and a huge statue honoring the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

With this being mid summer, the city was gorgeously in bloom -

As we walked along the streets, we found some fantastic street art…

…but nothing to compare to Valparaiso, on the coast.

We were to have some good friends join us for the next week of our trip at this point, but their plane was delayed by 12 hrs, so we went on the tour of street art and graffiti by ourselves. It was fascinating, and exhausting, hiking up and down many of the hills in the city for 3 hours.

For those who might have some knowledge of graffiti artists, INTI is the painter for the one above.

It was fascinating to see all the different styles of graffiti art.

This was the view from our hotel:

At times, the hills were crazy steep, but also picturesque -

Like the San Francisco cable cars, Valparaiso has “touristic” means of transport called ascensors. This one was built around 1900:

The density of housing up the hills was pretty significant -

When our friends arrived that evening, we were all treated to the experience of pepper spray wafting up into the neighborhood where we were staying, from the riots down on the streets of downtown. Man, that burns the eyes!

But like the phoenix, we rose again the next day, to push on…