When in Valparaíso ..... a World Heritage Site

While I was planning how to spend my days in Chile, I almost did not go to Valparaíso. The pictures that I saw on the internet and in my guide book were just not that enticing. However, on someone’s recommendation I did go and it turned out to be the highlight of my trip.

Valparaíso is a harbour city, about 70 km from Santiago. Founded in the 1540’s, it became the South Pacific’s greatest port in the 1800’s and only started to experience a decline when the Panama Canal was built. The amazing thing is that the city is built upon 45 steep towering hillsides from a narrow strip of coast. These hills are each covered by a maze of rainbow-coloured houses and shops (they use left-over paint from the ships in the harbour, hence the bright colours), cobblestone alleyways and labyrinth streets, funiculars and stairway footpaths. Somehow, between all the poverty and the dilapidated state of the buildings, there is this unique, faded grandeur that makes Valparaíso one of the most intriguing cities I’ve ever visited.

On the picture below you will see what the public transport in Valparaiso looks like. It is one of the funiculars, a sort of wooden carriage that slowly ascends the hills at very precipitous angles. Of the funiculars introduced between 1883 and 1912, 15 are still in use, including the first one ever opened. So, it rattles, it is crowded and maybe even scary to the tourist, but if you do not want to climb the stairways, it is the way to travel when you want to reach the hilltops.

The city is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site based upon its improvised urban design and unique architecture. In the two pictures below you first see the front and then the back of the same row of houses, built on a steep slope. It shows how the front entrance is in fact someone’s living room and five other families need to go through that house to reach their own.

This blog concludes my Chile trip (more on Rio from tomorrow). The little I saw of this amazing country surprised me. I now have a long list of destinations in Chile that I want to visit, including the Atacama Desert, Patagonia, the wine routes in the central valley, the ski-slopes of the Andes and Easter Island. But if I am lucky enough to return to Chile, the first item on the itinerary will be to go back to Valparaíso…

Image credits: 1) Wayfarer; All other photos by me

When in Viña del Mar ..... see an Easter Island moai

The town of Viña del Mar was founded in 1874 as a weekend retreat for the wealthy residents from Valparaíso and Santiago. Today it is Chile's premiere seaside resort. You can still see many of the charming old colonial houses and even castles dotted around town. We had lunch in one of the original castles and the seafood was plentiful and delicious. A Chilean girl sitting close to me on the airplane on the way to South America recommended “Machas a la parmesana” (mussels with parmesan) if I find myself in town and I gave it a try with some Chilean white wine from the Casablanca valley. Believe me, the combination of the meal and the setting created a memory that will last a long time!

At the Reñaca Beach in Viña, I had the chance to dip my toes into the Pacific Ocean, a first for me. Although everyone around me yelped at how cold it was, I thought the Cape West Coast might have one up on them :-)!

Notwithstanding all of this, for me the highlight of the day - by far - was seeing the original moai from Easter Island. The island, also known as Rapa Nui, is one of the world's most isolated inhabited islands and lies 3,510 km west of continental Chile (you can read more about the interesting history here and here). It is most famous for the monolithic gigantic statues, called moai, that the locals made from solidified volcanic ash. The largest moai ever raised on a platform weighs 82 tons and is almost 10m high. Even today the mystery of how the locals transported over 890 statutes to their locations all over the island remains, because today the island is almost completely treeless.

According to our guide for the day, only 3 original moais can be found outside of Easter Island and the Makaihi Moai of Ahu One is one of them, standing guard outside the Museo de Arqueología e Historia Francisco Fonck. I was instantly mesmerised - Easter Island is now on my bucket list!

Image credits: By me, except the one by the tour guide :-)

When in Santiago ..... visit the Andes

Geographically speaking, Chile is one interesting place! Of course, the most dominating feature of the country when looking at a map is its thin, long shape, spanning more than 4,190kms along the western edge of South America. It is never more than 185kms in width. In the north you find the amazing Atacama Desert, the driest in the world, and in the south the glaciers, fjords and dense forests of Patagonia. All of this is wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains.

While I was in Santiago, I went on a trip to the Andes. Traveling only 40 kilometres from the city, you ascend more than 2500m by travelling by bus on a winding mountain road in less than 60 minutes!!! The road has 67 hairpin bends (my cycling friends will be interested to hear that there is an annual bike ride up from Santiago to the 37th bend – pure torture, if you ask me!)

Leaving Santiago at 520 meters above sea level, it does not take long before the vegetation changes. You will see on the photo above the quisco that dominates the lower Andes and is one of the few cacti that can withstand cold and snow. 

A short while later, you reach the vegetation line and it starts looking like a moon landscape.

The trip ended at Valle Nevado, a ski resort at 3025 meters above sea level (As a side note, to see a ski resort in the middle of the summer and to see all the snow ploughs in the dust is a bit of a sad sight, but that can easily be rectified by a trip back in winter :-)!) The views were phenomenal and we were lucky to see a few Andean condors (Chile’s national bird is one of the world’s largest fowls, with a wingspan of over 3m!) watching us from high above in the cobalt blue sky. It was a good day – everywhere you looked there were reminders that we are now DEFINITELY in someplace other than our own country. And that is my favourite kind of realization….

You can read more about the ski resort here.

Image credits: All photography by me

When in Santiago ..... Central Market

In El Centro, the symbolic heart of Santiago, is Mercado Central. It is an engaging place to see, smell and buy the bounty of fish and shellfish found along the Chilean coast.

Mercado Central
I.V. Vergara and Ave. 21 de Mayo
Santiago

You can visit their website here.

Image credits: All photography by me

When in Santiago ..... glitzy and bohemian

My husband travels regularly for work, but I have never joined him on one of his work trips. Until now. When he left to go to Chile and Brazil, I “climbed into his suitcase” :-)!

First on the itinerary: Santiago in Chile. I honestly did not know what to expect: it’s a running joke amongst my friends that all the stamps in my passport are to first world countries. So, what were my first impressions of Santiago? Only that three days in this city is not enough to get under its skin, but more than enough for me to know that I want to return to this country and to this city. It’s a tough place to take in: it’s one of the most cosmopolitan cities in South America, but it’s home to over half Chile’s population, and the poverty on the outskirts of the city is quite severe. In climate it’s Cape Town, in scenic backdrop (the Andes) it’s Zurich, looking at the city hall, it’s Madrid.

Until the 1950’s, many of the buildings around the commercial areas of Barrio El Golf were nothing more than country homes situated on large plots of land. Today, you see glitzy skyscrapers, posh shops and stylish restaurants and the area is now often referred to as Sanhatten, a play of words on Manhattan and Santiago. Lots of new building projects are underway and you can see why Chile is seen as the model of economic prosperity in South America.

However, a lot like Manhattan, this city also has its bohemian side, and it can be found in a few of the barrios of the city, but by far the best of them, or at least my favourite, is Bellavista, which is roughly the two square kilometres below the San Cristobal statue at the bottom of the hill.

So, if you ever find yourself in Santiago, I can recommend the following based on my experience:

Borago – for a gastronomic experience at one of the best restaurants in Santiago, we ate the tasting menu with a fantastic wine pairing, with all products locally sourced and presented in outlandishly artful ways. A truly remarkable night out. (http://www.borago.cl/en/)

Patio Bellavista – A collection of restaurants and shops are spread around interior squares in the bohemian area of Bellavista. It is café culture Chile style – plenty of pisco sour… (http://www.patiobellavista.cl/index.php)

Turistik – this company operates a hop-on-hop-off bus service in Santiago. I also used their daytrips to surrounding areas. (http://www.turistik.cl/?lang=en)

The Aubrey – it is an upmarket boutique hotel in the Bellavista area. We went for drinks at their poolside piano bar. Perfect place for late afternoon pisco sours and tapas. (http://www.theaubrey.com/main/index/)

Pueblo Los Dominicos – a rustic complex, resembling a Chilean Colonial village with white-washed, low-slung adobe buildings, provides a change to see a huge variety of local arts and crafts in one place sometimes with the artist workshop attached. (I saw where Zoro’s Victoria buys all her wonderful hats from :-)!) (http://www.pueblitolosdominicos.com/espanol/home_.html)

Peruvian food - Chilean cuisine, the wonders of Borago notwithstanding is known to be a little…perhaps ‘bland’ would be unkind. And so some of the best food in Santiago is actually found in Peruvian restaurants. Peruvian food has a couple of interesting staples: corn (it was first found here in the 1500’s by the Spanish), aji – a kind of pepper, and things we’ve never seen like palm heart salad. My recommendation is that (my ex-pat South African friend) Mia's Peruvian housekeeper makes supper for you :-), but if she is not available, go to Tanta at Parque Arauco. (http://www.parquearauco.cl/restaurantes-cafe/tanta-2.html)

Image credits: All photography by me

French inspiration at Morrells

Just before I left for South America (I will start sharing all the blogs about that great trip tomorrow), I went to the Morrells Estate just down the road from me. Situated in Weltevreden Road in Northcliff, the estate belongs to Mike and Bernice Morrell, who started by restoring the first house ever built in Northcliff. Then a dairy farm, it is now a beautiful guesthouse, called – appropriately - the Farmhouse. Across the road, another beautiful old Manor House was developed into luxury accommodation, all in French Provencal style. But the reason for my visit was the Morrells Boutique Venue, which must surely be one of the most beautiful venues in all of Gauteng.

The garden was the first thing that enchanted me – they planted mature olive trees to make a beautiful olive grove. So now it’s a quite genuine patch of southern France in the heart of Northcliff, and it is a delightful surprise for someone who expects to find just another venue, only to be confronted with something that obviously benefitted from an eye for detail and a lot of dedication.

The areas of the venue that I photographed below, are “La Maison”, a beautiful piano room, “Le Grange” which is a larger function room with an outside bistro and “La Chambre”, a Parisian tea room.

The Boutique Venue was full of amazing images in itself, and so I will have to return another time for the Farmhouse and the Old Manor house.

Corner of Weltevreden Road & Scott Street,
Northcliff,
Johannesburg

You can visit their website here.

Image credits: All photography by me