Valparaiso, Chile
Valparaiso was one of our FAVORITE towns in Chile. The food, the cobblestone streets, the friendliness, the street art, it was ALL amazing! We are convinced this should be a stop on everyone’s trip to Chile, and I can only dream of visiting this colorful port town again one day.
The best was to get here is by bus.
We were in Santiago and decided last minute to do a week trip to Valparaiso. Buses are leaving from Santiago to Valparaiso about every 15 minutes. We went with Turbus because of a recommendation from a friend, but there are other bus companies that run the same route. Our tickets cost $5,000 CLP each (about $7.50 USD) and we arrived in about an hour and a half.
Once we arrived at the bus station, figuring out how to get to our accommodation was the next adventure. The majority of Valparaiso is built upon different cerros, or hills, and most of the streets are cobblestone, so we really didn’t want to drag our luggage too far. Uber was our plan, but of course my phone service stopped working before we arrived (side note: don’t trust Verizon’s ‘TravelPass’ service while in Chile), so that wasn't going to work. We hailed a taxi but he didn’t understand the address that was given to us by our Airbnb host. Luckily our Airbnb host spoke some English and I was able to call her and put her on the phone with the taxi driver to give him directions. *Our Spanish is not at the conversation level, so this was a bit of a hiccup for us. If you don’t speak the native language, always have a backup plan!
Once we arrived at our accommodation it was time to kick our feet up! We stayed in an apartment upon Cerro Concepcion and immediately fell in love with our rental and the area. It was clean, cozy, and in a quiet part of town.
Most streets have at least one if not a couple corner stores. The one closest didn’t have a huge selection, but we didn’t have a problem finding the necessities: wine, cheese, prosciutto, fresh bread, and pasta. Bueno!
Getting around in Valpo
Because we stayed on one of the more popular hills, we were able to walk just about everywhere. The street art is so amazing, we sometimes forgot how exhausted we were from all the up and down.
Buses went all over the city, but because we walked most places we only used the Trolley buses a few times. They cost just a few hundred pesos, which makes it even more worth it!
Funiculars ended up being a life saver! They are essentially boxes on tracks that take you up and down steep hills (slanted elevators). We rode the Reina Victoria several times because it was close to our apartment, but there are a number of funiculars around town that are still in operation. We tried to ride the Concepcion Funicular, but it was closed for maintenance. For just 100 pesos, it was a cheap and fun way to gain some major headway on those hills!
Street Art
Valparaiso is known for it’s street art. The walls of many buildings are covered in beautiful paintings. The difference between street art and vandalism is that artists of street art have permission to paint and are often commissioned to do so. The story goes that building owners were tired of graffiti vandalism, and realized that not many were vandalizing professionally painted murals. The more well-known the artist, the less likely it would get vandalized. We spent HOURS wandering the streets and admiring the colorful art!
Best hills to find street art: Cerro Alegre, Cerro Concepcion, and Cerro Bellavista: Home to Mueso a Cielo Abierto
Free Walking Tours
Several companies offer ‘free’ walking tours around the city. We went with Tours 4 Tips and could not have been happier!
You leave a tip at the end based on how much you enjoyed the tour. If we hated it, we didn’t have to tip anything. If we enjoyed ourselves, most people would tip around $10,000-$15,000/person, $20,000 if it was AMAZING.
*If you find yourself in Valparaiso, we recommend doing one of these tours as early as possible, to get a glimpse of the best street art and great recommendations for the remainder of your trip.
During the 3+ hour tour, our guide, who spoke amazing English and was very enthusiastic, walked us through street art and talked about several artists, took us on a bus and a funicular, treated us to alfajores (chocolate covered cookies with creamy caramel in the middle), and had a street musician sing us a romantic song about Valparaiso. It was a fantastic tour that we would probably take again!
Eat
If you haven’t noticed by now, we LOVE food. For a list of our top 5 favorites in Valparaiso click HERE.
Sea Lions!
Finding wildlife is always at the top of our list, even if we’re in a city. When we found out we could see sea lions we took off to Puerto Deportive to see these majestic animals fight over the best piece of concrete. It was a bit of a trek from our apartment, but it was good to walk off some of the cheese and bread we had been stuffing our faces with. The first thing we noticed was the SMELL, IT WAS HORRENDOUS! You’ll see Arthur covering his nose/mouth below. Despite the smell, it was pretty entertaining to watch the sea lions fight for sunbathing space, fall in the water, then try to jump back up on the concrete structure. If the smell wasn’t so bad, we would have hung out a little longer, but 20 minutes was about all we could stand!
Pablo Neruda’s house
Our last noteworthy experience while in Valparaiso was visiting Pablo Neruda’s Home. Unless you’re a big Neruda fan, I wouldn’t say this is something you HAVE to do, but something that should be considered if you have the time and don’t mind spending $7,000 CLP/person. A self-guided audio tour was available in English. It was a bit crowded even during the week, but interesting none the less. The house was full of strange and fascinating items, and had amazing views of the city and ocean. I would have found it more interesting if we learned more about Pablo himself and his activism rather than where the items in his house came from, but it was still a nice way to spend an afternoon. Arthur thought it was spectacular, and described it as spending a day in the life of the quirky poet.
Be sure to check out the one week trip we took south from Santiago HERE and helpful info for your trip to Chile HERE.
Have you been to Valparaiso and done something spectacular that wasn’t on our interniary? Leave us a comment below so we can add it to our list of things to do for next time!
Ciao Valpo! We hope to see you again soon!