Part of the trip to the Chilean coast and Viña del Mar included jumpng on the train to the neighbouring city of Valparaiso. Viña is modern but Valpo has absolutely exquisite tiny little streets with the hills kissing the ocean and quickly retreating upwards with wonderful, colourful buildings, apartments and cottages sweeping upwards with the lay of the land. We caught the metro accross and let it be said that the public transport system in Santiago and chile is second to none. The day was a little bit cool and perfect for walking around. Curiously though while it is easy to get lost in the city and the winding back dtreets there is actually little to remark about the area. We did start the morning looking at some f the seaside castles one of which received the newly inaugurated president of Chile the same day we were looking at it :)
We ate as a little cafe overlooking Valpo but the tranquility was sadly sullid due to the afternoon traffic noise below us on the main avenues. A highlight of the trip was staying a with our friend Damian and Raul and going out clubbing in Valpo. The cocktails were great and reasonably priced though not dirt cheap and unfortnately due to the tsunami warning the night life was a little bit lacking. Still the music is fantastic and its is absolutely hilarious listening to all the native spanish speakers singing along to lady gaga without a clue of what they are saying haha. We finifhed the night at about 2-3 in the morning but i had only had about 4 drinks through the night. I will mewntion though for the potential traveller smoking is not prohibited indoors like in Aus. It was awful and impossible to acclimatise to. Everything stank of cigarettes the next day and my favourite hoody ended up with a massive cigarette burn in it from a wayward butt. Oh well it was the perfect excuse to go shopping and buy myself a brand new Zara jacket ;) After this we head to Chañaral. It is a tiny little town on the chilean coast between Valpo and San Pedro (our next designated stop).
