Pumpernickel on Tour   … in South America

Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th October 2014

Valparaíso,
qué disparate eres,
qué loco, puerto loco,
qué cabeza con cerros, desgreñada,
no acabas de peinarte,
nunca tuviste tiempo de vestirte,
siempre te sorprendió la vida…

Pablo Neruda

I love this place. Four years ago I stayed far longer than intended in Valparaíso and this time I want to show my dad this wonderful ensemble of beauty, decay, geography, history, art and life. We start early in La Serena and again, our bus is late, but we still make it in daylight to Valparaíso.

Having lost all sense of time and days of the week, we didn’t realise that it is Saturday and accommodation scarce – the city is a popular weekend destination for Chileans as well. It takes us until after 20.00 hrs until we finally find a far too expensive hotel in the picturesque neighbourhood of Cerro Alegre.

Talking of time, it takes way too many hours of our day to keep this blog relatively up-to-date; I usually spent three to four hours writing a new post and thus I’d like to limit future entries to a brief summary and a few selected pictures. If you want to see more of the places we visit, please have a look at the Photo Galleries.

I am sorry, especially when I think of all the kind feedback we have received for our frequent reports, but Johannes has just made a projection of the time already used and the time necessary to keep up the pace and came up with  176 hours! So I hope you understand that we rather spend these hours enjoying our journey of a lifetime.

Thus here are just a few snaps from Valparaíso where we stayed two nights –

… by day

… by night

The Cerros are not the most very trolley-friendly environment…

Armada de Chile

I could stay here another few weeks, maybe longer – but Santiago beckons…

All Valparaíso photos here.