Friday, 4 october 2024
We returned to Santiago on Thursday. On Friday, we drove ~70 miles to Valparaiso, on the coast. Until the Panama Canal cut the Atlantic <-> Pacific route in half, Valparaiso was a very important port city. It’s still a busy city and a UNESCO world heritage site. It has lots of narrow streets, rising steeply from the port, and — at least in the neighborhood where our guide took us — an amazing variety of murals and brightly-painted buildings. This post gives you a tiny sample of what we saw in about an hour’s walk.
First, some sensitive portraits:
And some mind-benders:
The history of Chile, starting with the conquistadores, is recorded on this wall:
Because it’s such a steep city, there are plenty of paintings on long vertical walls, like this lovely musician.
And then, a few step away, a staircase worth looking at from the bottom.
Finally, a small painting on corrugated siding, nohing dramatic, but my quiet favorite:
The MHB Foghorn 