2025 Oct 2: Valparaiso

Slept in a bit, still in bed at sunrise 7am. The bedroom window faces east; the sun rises there, but angles south-to-north, as you can see here if you look closely:

Failed to mention yesterday, we’re out of cash, and although most places take credit cards, some don’t, plus we brought a shitload of Ben Franklins anticipating needing them in Argentina (more on that later), so I wanted to exchange some for pesos. We walked to the exchange neighborhood yesterday afternoon around 4:30 and they were all closed. I WhatsApp’d one in the evening, an actual human answered & explained they were open all day normally but closed early yesterday because of ‘protests’. Also we saw a bunch of smoke rising fraom the port area, and our hostess Maria messaged us that there was a dockworker strike.

So we headed back down there this AM, and on the way this guys stopped us & told us there would be a an earthquake drill, the whole business district would empty into the hills for a couple hours:

Strike 2 getting pesos.

We succeeded on our 3rd attempt this afternoon, got 942 pesos to the US$.

Strolling this AM - Valparaiso is a warren of passages and steps with buildings of various ages in various states of (dis)repair, with a LOT of street art and graffiti. Literally everywhere:

In the Cerros Alegre & Conceptión neighborhoods especially, there are cafes on every block. We stopped in at Piano Cafe:

Cafes are invariably run by very nice people, but the cappuccini generally have too much milk, you have to ask for less..

Valparaiso has 42 distinct hills, and they built 20 ‘ascensors’ - almost vertical funiculars. E.g:

Between here and there:

Lunch of excellent pizza & salad at Giardino Malandrino:

Through Plaza Bismark and Cerro Carcel:

Tiramisú at Cafe Entre Cerros. Very good:

…and more Cerro Alegre:

At the top of Ascensor Reina Victoria:

More Cerra Alegre:

The last block approaching our home:

Walked 5.4 miles.