Valparaiso appears to be just like Marmite. I loved it, Ross hated it! It's the strangest place. It's on the coast and was once a major naval base for the Spaniards. The main city consists of a couple of very long parallel roads on flat ground by the sea. The rest of the city is on the surrounding hills which veer up sharply. The hills, in some cases sheer cliffs, don't seem to have put anyone off from building on them and there are buildings perched everywhere. The thing that really makes this city stand out is that practically every building is painted, some quite garishly or with murals on the walls. It is so colourful and half the fun for me was just walking round the steep narrow streets looking at all the paintings. The city has 15 funiculars which gives an idea of how steep everywhere is. We had a ride on one of the funiculars just for the fun of it. The one we chose was slightly unusual in that it went first horizontally through the rock and then vertically up. Great view from the top too. The hostel we found was on one of the nicer 'posher' hills where the buildings have mostly been restored and there were lovely cafes, antique shops and markets dotted around. You got great views on pretty much every street and one night we found a little cafe with an outdoor patio to watch the sun set over the city down below.
So, why Ross didn't like it.................................. Well, the downside of Valparaiso is that it has the most stray dogs we've seen yet in S. America. And with numerous stray dogs, you get numerous piles of dog poo. And I have to admit, you could smell it everywhere, it was gross. The fact that Ross stepped in one of these ubiquitous piles didn't help matters either. So that and the little bric-a-brac shops I kept finding didn't do much for Ross. I thought the place was really different though............................. And I'm easily swayed by cafes and cake!
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