The closing realisation of last night was that I had lost the charger for the compact camera, probably on Easter Island, and the opening news of today was that I had also lost the ticket for the laundry. The morning was spent in sorting both these things out. The two women behind the counter at the laundrette were not amused by my carelessness, and there was much serious talk and shaking of heads. Then a third woman appeared, remembered me from yesterday, and sorted everything out. The camera charger was harder, but I finally got a replica of the original device. My success in following directions to a large electronics shop was much more to do with luck than judgement.
All that took longer than expected, as everything does. But I was packed and out of the hostel by 11 and on a bus to Valparaiso before noon. I was close to not going and instead staying in Santiago to get to know it better, but what swung it was that Neruda had a house in Valparaiso also, and I wanted to see something other than the capital.
The bus took us through hilly, hot country, low vegetation exposing the sandy grass of the steep slopes. At one point we went through a tunnel that must have taken three minutes end to end. It was motorway all the way. I dozed intermittently, and then we were coming into the town. Valpa, as the Lonely Planet abbreviates it, is based around a crescent bay. The town is sandwiched in between the water and steep hills of the Andes behind. The bus brought us in past a huge outdoor market, stretching for block after block, and then dumped us at a terminus not particularly near anything.
I got a taxi to the hostel. All I could establish with the driver was that he spoke no English and I no Spanish. He dropped me at the corner of a square with much gesturing that I should go down an alley off one corner. I wasn’t too happy with that but didn’t see any way around it. The alley turned out to lead slightly upward for twenty metres or so and then become steps. The steps turned 90 degrees left after a while, so I couldn’t see what was up there. It was the kind of place I normally would not have gone without a company of soldiers.
When I came around the corner in the steps all that was there to greet me were more steps and a cat. At the top I could see the sign for the hostel. It’s not a bad old spot – the room is large and reasonably clean and the house itself is nice, dominated by the family who live here. I think I am the only guest. It’s like staying with someone else’s aunt. Though the shared bathroom makes me glad I don’t necessarily have to shower here.
I went back out into the town and set out walking for casa Neruda. After a few blocks I realised that was going to take forever and it was way too hot, so I got a taxi instead. That seemed like an even better decision when I saw that the house is at the top of one of the very high hills that surround the town. Oddly I again had trouble figuring out how to get in, but once I did I found that at this house the tour was by audio-guide and you could proceed at your own pace.
And just as yesterday there was Neruda’s uncontainable personality and life bursting out of every corner. He bought this house, he didn’t build it – it had been designed by an eccentric Spanish guy but he had died before its completion and the house had sat as a shell for ten years. Neruda felt it was too big for him so he only bought the top floors. From there though the views across Valpa to the bay and the ships beyond are inspirational. Neruda had a chair by the window of sufficient comfort that he missed it when he was away – while on a diplomatic mission to France, he wrote to a friend that he would rather be sitting in the chair watching the light on the bay than arguing over copper. He called it ‘the Cloud’. Neruda always wrote in green ink, and in front of the Cloud was a footstool which still has the drops of ink of that colour that fell from his pen.
As with the house yesterday there were hundreds of meaningful items of all sizes and types, from the fireplace that Neruda designed himself to the plates on the wall to the glasses at the bar to the toy horse that had been originally part of a carousel. Neruda had brought it back from France and installed in pride of place in the living room. In his study at the top level was his first typewriter. The audioguide said that when the wind blew the windows in that room would shake and rattle, and it was here that Neruda wrote his book of poems about ships and the sea.
Neruda’s humour was everywhere. Beside the bar on the main living level was a small toilet, but the door to it was a decorative grill so anyone outside could see into it. At the top of the house the stairs turned a corner and finished in a wall; that was never mentioned or explained by the guide. I saw a woman automatically turn up the stairs to keep going and get quite the surprise to be facing something so solid. I bet Neruda would have laughed.
There was the same prohibition as yesterday on photographs, but I managed to circumvent that rule slightly. I set the camera to record video and tucked it in the side pocket of my bag and took a walk around, and the result of my espionage is not bad for a first-timer. I think Neruda wouldn’t have minded. If we meet in the afterlife I’ll ask him. Hopefully the Chilean tourist board won’t be there too.
Leaving casa Neruda I felt that main business of the day had been transacted. I walked back down the hill and wandered around at random for a few hours and thought about Santiago and Valpa. Santiago is like a European city that has been beaten with a South America stick – things work much as they do at home, and it looks similar and many things are familiar. But there is enough about the architecture and the people and the graffiti and the number of dogs asleep on the streets that you know you’re not in Europe. Valparaiso on the other hand is the full South America experience. The streets are winding and dirty, there are people selling all sorts of things on the streets, there is the huge market and its attendant smells, there is pollution that leaves blackness in its path, it’s full of the unfamiliar and the exotic and things that don’t exist in the West.  To pick a random example, the wires for electricity and telephone are chaotic, as though they grew up as needed organically with no central planning. Valpa and Santiago are worlds apart economically and aesthetically at least.
Anyway. In the late 1800s and the early 1900s the city of Valpa installed public elevators to help people get up and down the steep hills, and they are still functioning. The one I took was 300 pesos, so I imagine that only the tourists use them now. It works by connecting two cars with a were over a fixed wheel, so the weight of one going down pulls the other one up. I assume there is more energy injected into the system somewhere, though it could be that they always load more people into the car going down, I guess. It was interesting to see it. It comes from a time when science and engineering were so much more understandable in their impact on daily life than they are now.
I stopped for coffee a few times – I asked for a cappuccino seeing as they happened to have it on the menu at one place, and it came with a giant squirt of whipped cream from a can on the top – and walked along the shore and thought about taking one of the boat tours, but didn’t in the end. The boats are open and very crowded, and I wasn’t in the humour. I went looking for a place for dinner, even though I wasn’t really hungry, and eventually ended up in a place far more notable for its booze than its food. But I partook of both nonetheless.
It’s 9.20pm now and has been dark for an hour; I was in the hostel half an hour before that, as I imagine that the streets of Valparaiso at night are not the best place for a luminously white person in a North Face top on their own. The guidebook says its safe enough but to keep away from the streets with the stairs. Given the location of my humble residence, that would be difficult for me. Earlier in the day I suspected the evening may be a bit short on diversion given the need to be home before dark, so I procured a shoulder of dark Bacardi and a small bottle of Coke. Shortly I will have some of the combination out of an empty water bottle; I’ve always tried to conduct myself with a certain casual glamour.
Cheers.
