Actually I've got a room in Viña del Mar. In comparison to Valpo it's a rather quiet seaside resort. With a bus you can reach Valpo in about 15min if there's not much traffic.
Ok, back to Valpo. After I got to placa Sotomayor there was still some fog so I sat into a cafe and waited for it to clear. Actually both cities seem to drown in traffic. Here the horn is used quite liberally which doesn't really change much...
Spontaniously I booked a guided tour for the afternoon. The time until then I passed having a look around on my own. I started with Cerro Artillería.
Talking about Cerros. Weeeeeell, Valpo consists of 47/51 Cerros. These are more or less districts. And there are the "flatlands". 80% of the Porteños, that's what the locals are called here as well, are living in the Cerros and 20% in the flatlands. Why 47 and 51? Valpo has get 47 hills, these are also the districts. However, some hills are too big for just one district so they house 2. Still they are called Cerro.
There are a number of lifts in the city and they are usually more than 100 years old. You can tell with most of them... Also they only pick up 10-15 passengers in one go even if there would be room for more. I've got no idea why. On top there's usually a view point which gives you excellent views of the city. From up here of the harbour and the city. For new years there's a huge fireworks along the whole coastline, a guesstimated 5-10km!!! Wow, that must be awesome!
You've all heard about those colorful houses? Well, not all of them are colorful... But there are still people living in them...
But it's true, the colors are great :)
Now for a quiz question to all gamers out there, do you recognize this?
Not? Ok, here's another one... And yes, there are people living in it!
It's a fact that almost all houses have corrugated metal on the outside to resist the humid and salty aire. And to prevent the metal from rusting away it gets a paint coat. In the good old times they used leftover paint from the ships. That's why the houses had so many different colors. After a while this became the style of the city. So if you try to get directions you may get something like: "I'm living in street Brasil in the green house" :D
Then I was down again for the afternoon tour which started in front of the Marine Headquarters. Here you see one of the Trolley-busses pass. These are old busses which have been converted to electric drive.
After we were at the harbor and heard about the history of Valpo we went to the lift Ascensor El Peral. This is one of the few which got renovated in 2005 and can really only hold 10 people.
The tour was nice and covered different points but didn't give me any new and different pictures so that's it for today. Tomorrow I've signed up for a tour about street art in Valpo, you'll love this :)
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen