Meredith's Best Of Valpo

Well, everyone, my transitional state has me in an overly introspective mood as of late. Then, when I'm not being pensive, I'm running around trying to visit everyone I know in a 4 or 5 state area (not as bad as it sounds, I'm from New England), and both unpacking from Chile and re-packing for California.....which involves going through many storage boxes. All this combined leads to a substantial lack of interest in posting on the blog. I refer you to my previously flawless record of regular posting and thank you for your patience as I get my life rearranged.


In the meantime, I present to you: Meredith's Official Best of Valparaiso, Chile!



Food and Drink


Best budget dinner restaurant: Epif, international-style vegetarian food on Cerro Alegre


Best pricey dinner restaurant: Concepcion, cuisine nouveau, Calle Papudo on, you guessed it, Cerro Concepcion. Sit outside in the garden in the summer.


Best dinner with a view: Cafe Turri, Cerro Concepcion. Reserve a specific table for a good view, and don't forget to order the house cocktail, it's incredible.


Best lunch, full menu: Natur-In, Calle Condell, near Plaza O'Higgins (walk up Uruguay and take a right, it'll be on your left, big wooden door). Vegetarian, three course menu for 1,200, coming in at 2,000 if you order one of their delicious fresh juices (recommended).


Best quick & cheap lunch (and dinner): El Sandwich Cubano, Plaza Intendencia (kitty-corner from Lider). Get the Moros y Cristianos plate, it's the best thing on the menu and also the best deal.


Best (in that it is the only) place to eat on a Sunday: Allegretto, good pizzas and drafts, open late.


Best seafood: Any of the small shops near the fish market in the port.


Best sushi: Kookai, Plaza Victoria--actually owned by Japanese people, and graced by this sign:




Best salad: Mora, a bit down from El Sandwich Cubano in the direction of Lider.


Best ice-cream: The stand in the front section of the wood-facade restaurant in Plaza Anibal Pinto.


Best fruit wine: No, not sangria--fruit blended with wine. Tie between Barposeia and Ritual, side by side on Almironte Montt by Plaza Anibal Pinto.


Best tea menu: Cafe con Letras, Almironte Montt, Cerro Alegre.


Best coffee: Puro Cafe, Plaza Victoria. Just watch out: they claim to have wireless, but it never works.


Best scary, knock-you-down drink: El Suicidio, Pub Matiz, which oddly enough has two locations directly opposite one another on Subida Ecuador.


Best place to get a beer in the afternoon: "The Place With The Mean Waitresses," as dubbed by Elisa and myself: walk up Bellavista towards Subida Ecuador. It's on your left with a typical Fuente de Soda menu. You'll recognize it by a neon sign on the back wall that says "Chiloe," two TVs that are never playing the same thing, a jukebox, and a whole lot of old men lounging around with liters and cigarettes. Not recommended as a solo venture, but two drinking girls can have a nice time chatting and disrupting social conventions. Don't forget to order a liter each.



Nightlife



Best free evening (indoor) entertainment: Wednesday and Thursday nights at Boliche, Calle Cummings (as of my last residency, a great band and a comedy musical performance, respectively)


Best paid evening entertainment: Events at Teatro Mauri, Avenida Alemania


Best cultural events: Programming at La Sebastiana, Cerro Bellavista


Best club: La Sala, Port District, just ask someone for directions. I don't go to clubs unless I'm drunk enough to dance, which also means too drunk to pay attention to where exactly I am.


Best cafe-style bar: Pajaritos, Calle Donoso.


Best movie house: Cine Insomnia, Calle Condell


Best combo deal: Combo 1 at Coyote Quemado, Subida Ecuador: 1 taco, 1 shot of tequila, and 1 beer for 1 mil.


Best place for a cheap vodka: Abasto, Calle Cummings, next to the Ascensor La Reina. Don't let the 800 teenage fleites hanging out on the Ascensor's steps put you off, just wade through them and head on in, the bar's got a bouncer.


Best place for a terremoto: Bitacura, Calle Cummings, serves up a large and inexpensive pitcher of this pineapple-ice cream-alcohol concoction.


Best place for an expensive cocktail: El Trole, Calle Cummings, where you can sit in an old trolley and enjoy a nice atmosphere. Completely empty until at least 12:30.


Best bet for a late night snack: Otra Cosa, Almirante Montt, at Plaza Anibal Pinto. They always seem to be open and have dozens of different kinds of empanadas, some vegetarian, as well as completos and other such things.


Best live music: Wander around the Port district and you'll find lots of shows.


Best over-all entertainment: The festivals!


Best advice:Don't walk up stairway pasajes at night!




Tourist Jaunts



Best quirky spot to visit: Cemeterio Playa Ancha, with its hand-constructed budget pseudo-mausoleums. Don't miss the grave of Emile Dubois, Valpo's own unofficial saint, in the uphill right corner in the home-made section of the cemetary.


Best real-neighborhood walking tour: Cerros Polanco and Baron


Best cultural walking tour: Up and around Cerros Alegre and Concepcion, and don't forget the passageways. Then head up Almironte Montt to the circular shaped square and take a left onto Avenida Alemania. Enjoy the views and the various monuments as you make your way to Cerro Bellavista. Turn left on Calle Florida and visit Pablo Neruda's house, La Sebastiana. Head down Cerro Bellavista, keeping to the right of the church, and wander the not-spectacular but satisfactory Museo a Cielo Abierto. Head down Ascensor Espiritu Santo, turn left on Calle Condell and visit the oh-so-strange museum of natural history.


Best day trip: Hiking Cerro La Campana (accesible by public transit)


Best near-by camping: Laguna Verde--neither a Laguna, nor Verde, but a great secluded beach. Catch a bus in front of Lider heading south, go past the actual town of Laguna Verde (ask the driver to let you off on the road to the lighthouse). ASK FOR DIRECTIONS when you get there on how to get to the beach, and don't trust small children (see linked post).


Best beach: I prefer the third beach north in Vina.


Best thing to do on a Sunday: Check out the antique/flea market in Plaza O'Higgins.


Best views of the city: Cerros Artilleria and Baron.



Goods and Services



Best laundry for the best price: Jerusalem, Plaza Anibal Pinto, middle portico in the large ugly gray building.


Best place to use Skype: Cerro @legre, Calle Urriola. Good connection, good headsets, and best of all, quiet--no gamers.


Best place to sit for hours using wireless, having ordered only one cup of tea: Desayunador, Cerro Alegre, Almironte Montt on the corner of Urriola. The wait staff is hard to flag down, but they also won't bother you even if you're there for 6 hours. Even better, all the booths are next to outlets and no one minds if you plug in.


Best used clothing: Calle Condell, on the right heading into the pedestrian portion of Subida Equador. Unsure of the name, but you'll see the racks of clothes. There's some decent stuff in there, particularly if you're heading to a theme party.


Best new clothing: Unfortunately, you'll have to head to the---ugh---mall in Vina if you need something nice. Take a bus marked Libertad and get off at 18 Norte, you'll see it. If you have the time, sometimes decent things can be found in Ripley (Plaza Victoria) or Polar (Avenida Argentina), and they'll be much cheaper than the mall.


Best multi-lingual bookstore: At the very bottom of Calle Cummings, at the corner with Plaza Anibal Pinto.


Best kept financial secret: Banks close at 2pm, but you can also cash checks from many Chilean banks at ServiPag (best office is in the financial district, ask which street as I can't recall).


Best place for cheap produce: The market house, near the end of Avenida Brasil, and the Saturday markets on Avenida Argentina and in the port.


Best place to buy fish: The fish market in the port. There is no fish, repeat no fish, in the supermarket (Lider).


Best place to buy anything under the sun, for cheap: Avenida Argentina, Saturdays and Sundays.


Best place to buy cheap bags and luggage: Walking from Plaza Victoria towards the Terminal de Bus on Pedro Montt, a few blocks up on the left side, is a place with medium sized backpacks for 2mil, small suitcases for 4, etc.


Best deal on a bus to Argentina: Cata, cleverly hidden on the second floor of the Terminal de Bus.


Best place to rent a car: Walk along Calle Independencia near Plaza O'Higgins, there are several rental places. An economy car can be rented for 16.000 a day.


Best way to find an apartment: Walk around the neighborhood and look for signs in the windows; avoid rental agencies.

Exit Stage Left

In Pucon, in the Southern region of Los Lagos, the main attraction is Volcan Villarica. This semi-active volcano looms over the town. Elisa being the jock that she is, the first thing that she wanted to do when we arrived was to climb it.

We signed up with one of the many available tour companies, and at 7am Wednesday morning we were bumping our way up the gravel road towards the volcano in the company of four hyperactive guides. They shared massive sandwiches, blasted the radio, and swigged soda from the bottle. I stared at the volcano dominating the windshield and resolved to reach the top.
With large packs filled with mountaineering outfits and one icepick each, we started off at the base. The first section was loose volcanic ash and stone--it was very similar to walking up a vertical beach. The sun was strong and punishing, but we wove our way upwards single file. Elisa, predictably, was at the front of the line, and I was just behind her. The pace was slow and steady, and as my calf muscles began to scream I repeated meditation mantras in my head. In this way we arrived at our first resting place.

From there, we entered the snow. We were given a brief tutorial on proper icepick usage, and off we went. My legs felt fine after the break, and the cardiovascular effort was minimal due to the slow pace. Strangely though, as we wound back and forth over the incredibly steep slope, my head began to feel odd. For about ten minutes, it worsened steadily until I became concerned about my ability to continue.

"Elisa, I'm dizzy."

"It's probably the altitude," she told me. "Take deep breaths."

Ah. I can deal with this. I tried to breath deeply, a difficult task while climbing a mountain. Nonetheless, the feeling only continued. Staring at my feet, as was necessary in order not to miss the footholds cut into the snow, I began to lose sense of which direction was which. At times, my stomach turned and I worried that I would be sick all over the bright white slope. My legs felt shaky, even though they weren't exceptionally tired.

"I don't feel very good."

"You should tell them."

"No!"

I kept pushing. The feeling kept growing. Every five or six minutes I'd ejaculate some increasingly dramatic comment on my condition. At one point, I moaned,
"I feel really, really bad right now!"

The guide heard me and swivelled his head around to face me. "Are you ok?"

"Oh yes!" I said brightly. "I'm fine, I'm fine."

About ten minutes later, some 30 or 40 minutes after I'd begun to feel ill, I was distinctly not fine. I caught my breath a bit too shortly and with that, I lost control over my breathing and began to hyperventilate. My knees gave out and I crashed down onto the snow. The guides ran over and, despite my embarassment, I let my pulse be taken and ate the proferred chocolate. Soon, I was able to make the very short distance to the next resting area, a bare rock in the snow.

Altitude sickness, the guides decided, and refused to let me go higher. And so I stayed on the rock, with a wonderful French woman who had tired, and a young guide who was thrilled to get off easy on his 9th straight day of work. The view was beautiful, and we talked and shared sandwiches before sledding down to the bottom and relaxing in the sun. It was a beautiful day; my two new companions each had wonderful stories to tell; the sun was warm; and the lower down on the mountain we got the more I felt my brain begin to stop spinning and my head stop floating above my body. It was not what I set out to do, but I was happy, and I felt no regrets even while browsing Elisa's pictures of the crater over dinner.

The next morning, I woke up, and I knew that I would leave Chile if I were offered the job I had interviewed for in the States.

It's not the country, though I thought that at first, nor is it being far from home. It's a combination of factors, and at the center is my dissatisfaction with work. Teaching was challenging me, but not in the right ways. I felt that my emotional life was wrought with stress, but that my intellectual life had somehow stagnated. I loved my city and my friends, but I had nothing of my own, no project to put my energy towards.

And so it was that when I left Valparaiso on the morning bus to Buenos Aires last week, I left for good, at least for now.

What next? I'm thrilled to have accepted a full-time volunteer position with couchsurfing.com. I'll be starting as their Member Communications Coordinator and Writer next month. In exchange for my work, I'll receive housing, food, and transportation in Berkeley, CA. If you're not familiar with the project, I encourage you to check it out--it's an incredible effort to transform the way people travel, and one that I've been active in during my time in Valpo.

I don't think that I'm through with Chile, in many ways, so stay tuned as I plan on blogging here for a bit longer. I don't expect to write with the same frequency, giving the changes I'm going through, but I still have plenty to say about my time in Valparaiso. Meanwhile, I'll hopefully have another blog up and running sometime after I arrive in California.

In the end, it sometimes works out that the goals that we set for ourselves need to be changed. Sometimes you need to accept your own limitations, and understand that moving forward will bring you more trouble than glory. Sometimes you need to stop and say, "The view is fine from here."