The Jewel of the Pacific

The Chilean port city of Valparaiso (also called ‘La Joya del Pacifico’ as in the title of the post) used to be one of the major Pacific ports until the Panama Canal was opened. Nowadays the port’s importance is much reduced, but an energetic and in many respects surprising and beautiful city remains. The city is strewn over a large number of hills steep enough to give a certain frisson of excitement if you try and drive down them, or take one of the disturbingly creaky wooden elevator cars (the ‘funicular’s) up them.

The old town is a UNESCO world heritage site with its mixed European colonial architecture, however what reallly caught our attention were the residential areas in the hills above the port. Seemingly regardless of incline houses are crammed in in every direction, each decorated differently producing a very striking effect. Each turn into a new street reveals new surprises and different decoration.. quite a change from the geography and feel of most of Santiago.

We’d recommend a visit if you passing through – you can do it in a day, but for security it may be best to travel with an established local guide company – we used AboutChile (http://www.aboutchile.com/) and felt very comfortable and happy with the tour we received (although we did reorganise on the fly to replace less interesting parts of the city tour).

Dense building covers Valparaiso's hillsides

Housing is tightly packed even on slopes.

Colourful house decoration on a Valparaiso street.

The cobbled streets add to the attractiveness of the area.