The Graffitic Wonders of Valparaiso

Right now we are somewhere over the Pacific Ocean off the Coast of Lima heading for Guayaquil en route to Quito.

We had an amazing time in Valparaiso. We arrived at Santiago airport and managed to get a return ticket on the Centroaeropuerto bus (the other is TurBus), which dropped us off at the Pajaritos bus/metro station just in time to catch a Pullman bus to Valparaiso. We drove into the sunset along a long straight turnpike crossing the coastal hills in two long tunnels arriving an hour and a half later at the Rotavaria bus terminal after which we caught the first city bus that pulled in along Puerto Montt and then O'Higgins to the Lider Express supermercado, where after some figuring with the road signs dragged our luggage up steepish Cummings to the wildly chic Casa Verde Limon the house of the green lemon, adorned with commissioned art in situ and crowned the most atmospheric hostel 2009 by hostelworld.

Verde Limon centre in green.

It had a cavernous four-storey high central enclave for a living room with individually decorated doubles and dorms, and three keys - one to open the gate to the alley that linked the building between Cummings and the street below, one to get in the side door and one to open the deadlocked bedroom which had a huge six foot wide bed.

Living room and our double

Exterior views

After picking up some food from Lider, we ventured out in the night and took the local ascension the crazy little near vertical cable cars established in Valpariso at the turn of the 20th century up to Cerro Conception, one of the precipitous hilltop neighbourhoods that overlook the harbour.The entire region is a case of art overtaking life. Basically graffiti has taken over and taken the artistic lead so that all the buildings either sport grafitti or are painted in contrasting pastel hues. The entire neighbourhood has this odd mix of run down desolation combined with avante garde bohemian cafes, bars and a few odd churches, a castle and a few absurdly narrow buildings built in the wedge between steeply winding streets.


In the morning we retraced our steps ascending by one ascension and later descending on the other side by another, taking in the sweep of the city from the heights and scuttling back mid-morning to pack and retrace our steps on the local bus, the intercity bus, and the Santiago airport bus, only to find we had misread the departuere time and given ourselves a two and three quarter hour wait before boarding for Quito and losing the camera among the luggage in the process giving myself near apoplexy as well as having a slightly sore tooth and Christine having a bloating varicose vein driving her balmy. Nevertheless, despite the brief time we were there, we had a really good experience of the famously quirky flavour of Valparaiso.


Valparaiso has provided the funky urban cultural complement to the natural environment of the passes and the resort and ski towns of the Lake District.

Closing the Circles

The Chile-Argentine Circuit

The last ten days have been spent closing the circles by making internet bookings for transport and accommodation favouring chic budget backpackers who have good internet access. In the first loop around the lakes district of Chile and Argentina, we fly Sky Airlines from Santiago and plan staying at Casa Margouya in Puerto Varas, advanced booking on Andesmar to Villa la Angostura where we have beds at Hostel la Angostura, and Puma Youth Hostal in San Martin de los Andes, where we hope to take either the Tromen or the Hua Hum Pass back to Chile, hopefully reaching the Tree House in Pucon before returning north via a flight back from Temuco. San Martin has a very complete multi-lingual site with all these passes.

Green Accommodation

We have also booked for accommodation in the cities we fly into at night, Hostal Forestal in Santiago, the chic artistic Hostal Casa Verde Limon in Valparaiso, l’Auberge-Inn in Quito and the quaintly traditional Hospedaje Casco Viejo in Panama City.

The Ecuador-Colombia Circuit

After this we decided to explore bookings in the Ecuador-Colombia circuit because we have it to make through to Cali to catch the COPA linking flight to Panama and found some racy backpackers with internet or e-mail reservation and booked Hostal Transilvania in Banos, Hostal Rincon del Viajero in Otavalo, HostelTrail in Popayan and are waiting for e-mail replies from A Welcome Break in Tena and Hotel San Sebastian in Pasto.

Please also note that the old main bus terminal in central Quito has been replaced by two new ones on the outskirts, one serving north to the border with Colombia and the other south and most other areas, including Amazonas. We found it very difficult to find bus schedules and companies going the north route to Tena until we found this site, listing the bus company contacts and departure times for Quito-Tena via Baeza. Note that by October 2010 the old Mariscal Sucre airport will be replaced by a new one ten times the size 18 kms out.

The new Quito terminals (blue and red) and the abandoned central terminal (gray)
with local bus/trole links, showing Mariscal Sucre airport mid right.

We also clinched a few key bookings for a Budget rental car at midnight in SF airport, to add to those we have on arrival in Dublin, Rome and Avis Amman because they have an office at the Allenby Bridge. We also booked some further afield accommodation close to times we have to make a plane or ferry connection - Chicago Getaway Hostel, Camping Tiber in Rome, Solfataria in a geothermal field near Naples and several gypsy stops en route to a night at Carpe Diem in Brindisi before we catch the ferry to Corfu. There we have a choice of Dionysus Camping on Corfu and Elena and Kalami Beach at Igoumenitsa, depending on where the ferry stops first in the evening, and on via Delphi (Apollon) and Athens (Camping Athens or Hostel Aphrodite) to Crete.


We also did a rather ingenious thing using Google Earth, prompted by a neat camper van free camping web site called Green Archipelago - Arcipelago Verde - which had a Google Earth file showing the locations of free parks across Italy and neighbouring countries. This led to our own aerial search using street view for discrete free camping hideaways where we could park the car and put up a small tent on small side roads adjacent to wilderness areas while driving across Italy.

Now all we have to do is gather our medicines, international drivers licences, and some foreign currencies and pack! No just kidding there is heaps to do!