I really wanted to visit Valparaiso while I was in Chile because my great-grandfather, a Scottish sea captain, was here in 1892 and 1893. It’s not surprising that he was here because it used to be the main port of Chile in those days, and a major stopping-off point for ships travelling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans via the Strait of Magellan, before the Panama Canal opened. It’s rather different now; it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and very boho. But I like to think that he might have walked along the same little streets as me, with their higgledy-piggledy coloured houses – although minus the wacky-baccy inspired murals that cover so many of the old buildings now.
Even the staircases in Valparaiso are colourful
But it’s so steep that there are five funiculars to get you up the hills, and there are fabulous views of the ocean and the Andes once you get to the top. It’s also earthquake central around here. Two of the most powerful earthquakes ever have hit this region – in 1906 and in 2010. The 1906 quake was so powerful that it moved the whole Earth three centimetres to the right, and consequently it spins faster now! And the Tsunami which followed that quake had waves 5-6 metres high and was observed from as far away as Hawaii and Japan.
And now, due to various random issues connected with tectonic plates that I didn’t quite follow, the Andes are growing by 2.5 cm a year, while the Alps are shrinking by 1.5 cm a year. So in a few millennia we’ll just be left with a few molehills in Europe and everyone will be heading to Chile for their skiing holidays.
The region around Valparaiso is famous for wine and for pisco, which is distilled, fermented grape juice. The local microclimate has a coastal mist which creates natural irrigation for the grapes every morning. This mist is called baguada, which is apparently a corruption of the English ‘bad weather.’ The sailors would look out of the window in the morning, see the mist and grumble about the bad weather because, to be fair, they’d all left England to get away from the bad weather. The locals picked up the phrase and thought it was the technical term for the morning mist and it stuck.
We visited a lovely winery, but unfortunately the location was far nicer than the wine. I much preferred the pisco in this part of the world – as you can see from this photo …
Oh well … one more nail in the coffin of my reputation.