Colorful Houses, the Ocean, and Rain

Last Saturday, we took a bus to Valparaiso, which used to be the most important port in the country.  It is also the home of the Chilean national congress, which moved from Santiago at the end of the dictatorship of Pinochet.  The trip was for us to take a break and do a little sightseeing outside Santiago, and breath clean air after so long in Santiago.

The bus station in Santiago

My nice coffee

The day started out with problems.  We first got off the train at the wrong metro station, meaning that we'd only get to the buses right on time to board.  When we got to the bus stop, we found out that even though Nathan had called to confirm the time we were leaving, only two of our tickets had been confirmed.  This meant that those two had to take the first bus, and the rest of us had to wait for the next one, leaving 15 minutes later.  Luckily, one of the staff members here went with them because she had planned to show us around the city and her ticket was fine.  While waiting, I went and got a cappuccino, which was the nice cup of coffee I'd had until then.  (There's probably going to be a post soon comparing all of the different types of coffee I've had here, complete with pictures.)  The bus ride was pretty short (about an hour and a half) and it went through the mountains, so I took lots of pictures.

One of several vineyards we passed

When we got to Valparaiso, it was pouring, only the second time it had rained since we've been in Chile.  We went to a cafe nearby and had lunch while we waited for the rain to stop.  I had cazuela, a traditional soup with a quarter of a chicken (complete with bones and skin), chunks of pumpkin (also with the skin on), a whole potato, and part of a cob of corn.  By the time we finished eating, the rain had stopped, so we walked through the city to our hostel.  On the way, we gathered a following of seven stray dogs who made sure no one got in our way, protected us from the cars around us, and made sure we all stayed together.

This house was in tons of the postcards
I saw around the city

The hostel was really nice.  The owners are Christian couple who decided to turn their home into a hostel after their children moved out because they didn't need all of the space anymore.  Saturday afternoon, we were only there long enough to put our stuff away and pay for the rooms, but they were really nice to us.  Sunday, they made scrambled eggs with cheese and ham for us and gave us mil hojas, a cake kind of like baklava with manjar layers, which was a wonderful departure from the bread and cereal we have every morning in Santiago (the cake was a little sweet for breakfast, but good.)

The girls' room

La Sebastiana

We then wandered through the city down to the port.  The city was really cool to see, because all of the houses were bright colors and there are murals on the walls by the streets.  The city is built on hills, so all the streets are really steep and several of the alleys have staircases off to the side.  At the port, we looked through the souvenir shops a little before deciding to go to La Sebastiana, one of the homes of Pablo Neruda.  He had a very eclectic assortment of furniture and things he collected displayed throughout the house, so it was very interested to look through.

Afterwards, we went to dinner at J. Cruz, which was recommended by just about everyone we talked to as the best place to get chorriana, a dish with french fries, meat, onions and eggs.  Some people on the team had tried it before and it sounded good, but the dishes came out with pools of grease and fat on the bottom, so it wasn't very appealing.  It was a fun evening though, and we went back to the hostel to rest and chill.

Our guard dog for the day, Brutus
(as named by us)

Sunday, we had a church service where we watched a sermon by John Piper on evangelism and the hostel owners joined us.  Between then and lunch, most of the girls went to explore the city and pick out souvenirs and other things.  I got a new purse to replace the one I brought from the States that was falling apart.  The new one is really cute and seems really well made for as cheap as it was.  For lunch, we went to a very nice seafood restaurant in the port that was delicious and totally made up for dinner the night before.  I had grilled salmon with shrimp, and fruit salad with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce for dessert.  So far, this has been my 3rd favorite meal, behind the sushi and the barbecue.

After lunch, we talked for a little while about what the next couple of weeks will be like, especially introducing the people we've met to members of the Chilean staff so they'll be connected after we leave.  Then we went to the bus station to come home.