One of the things I have come to relish most is the gulf between my imaginings and the reality of the towns I stay in.
Take Valparaiso for instance, the town where I am chilling having dropped XavieR off at a Customs Yard here a few days ago, and where I am now killing time before I have the awesome family reunion in nearby Santiago in a few days time.
As one of the very few 'known' locations in South America to have a service to assist with shipping motorcycles either in or out, the name 'Valparaiso' has been known to me for well over a year. I have looked at its close proximity to the west of Santiago, and understood that it is a major regional shipping port.
Like all the towns I have chosen en route, this one did not fail to surprise. I had learnt early on to have no expectations of the upcoming town or city, as to be honest, my imaginings were just not up to it. Even when I had banked enough visuals of Latin American towns, I still fell well short from reality, as I found that not only did each country have a unique blueprint, but it also changed between towns of the same country; often and unsurprisingly, around geographic lines, like mountains and tropical regions.
Valparaiso is just over an hour's drive from smogged in, noisy, flat Santiago. Yet in that 70 miles the smog melts away, the roads suddenly wind and drop, and you arrive in the twisted story book city of Valparaiso. The city sprawls in a mainly low-rise fashion around a 270' bay, dotted with the occasional, 20 storey or so, high rise block of flats. Every usable inch of land has seemingly been claimed: large modern commercial structures and housing on and around the bay, mixed with beautiful colonial structures, Chilean Naval buildings, and then ... a container shipping yard where you would expect to see a pier, or swanky shopping area in most other city!
Away from these areas it seems anything goes. The city is built on a steep set of hills which slope to the Pacific's edge, and once away from the down town areas proper, the town turns to a mix of flimsy tin roofed homes amongst an equal number of more sturdy residences. Dogs, litter, street art fill all the spaces in between, yet the primary colours and eclectic mix of it all somehow makes it work.
It is a mad, non-sanitised, real world version of a beautiful multi-coloured sea port town of a children's book, or Miazaka Anime film, dog poo an all.
