Valparaiso surprises

A cold morning of 13*C and a little rain so I set off to explore the town of Valparaiso. After a while wandering through the steep hillsides and narrow warrens of alleys and side streets I found a funicular that would take me down to the main part of town, near the port. The funicular was built in 1902, and is a little box that is pulled up and down the hills by a narrow cable. There used to be 31 of them, however after decades of neglect there are only 13 still working. Surprisingly there are no signs or directions to these weird cars. In fact it's just a nondescript door in an building that leads you to the car!. Once I reached the port side I made my way to the tourist office. I asked for a map of things to see. They gave me a town map and then said "Don't go anywhere near here as it's too dangerous" the no-go area covered nearly 1/2 the map! However, I wandered through what was left of the town and it seemed every piece of footpath was covered with locals trying to sell something! One street side stall only sold sink plugs and strainers!, another just sold cleaning products. You could literally buy anything you could ever need (and a lot of stuff you don't) on the street. Quite amazing. The other thing I noticed was a number of stores that only had poker machines. Every few hundred feet there was store you could jump in and have a quick bet! There was also a lot of buskers working the streets. One group could play the drums back to front! There were also dogs everywhere, so my universal measurement of dog crap on the footpath gauge (invented in France) was off the charts today.

Valparaiso is a surprising town. Some buildings are as grand as you would see anywhere in the world and others are just rubbish. You could sense to maritime history in the place with a large number of statues, buildings and street names with English and European links. This is possibly one of the most fascinating places I have ever been to. Tomorrow I head south on my 22  hour drive to Quellon near the bottom of Chile.