Vina del Mar y Valparaiso

Thursday morning the whole group of American University students and a group of students from Wake Forest University piled onto two small buses and headed towards the beach. The first stop that we made was Isla Negra, the location of one of poet Pablo Neruda's houses. It was beautiful! The sun was out and for the first time since coming to Chile it wasn't over 80 degrees. We toured the house and then had some free time to spend on the beach. Unfortunately you aren't allowed to take pictures inside the house, but it had some amazing views and was very creatively decorated.









After Isla Negra, we traveled to Vina del Mar, also on the coast of Chile. We again had some free time to visit the beach, although this one wasn't quite as pretty as the one at Isla Negra. Vina del Mar and Valparaiso are port towns that are sort of in a cove and are protected by a breakwater so there aren't really any waves. On Friday morning we took a short bus ride to Valparaiso, the most important port city in Chile. It was a booming city until the Panama Canal was built and ships no longer had to travel around Cape Horn. The city was built without a plan and is built on 42 or 43 hills (Cerros). We had a walking tour in the morning and then spent some time at the beach before checking into our hostel. There were a group of us that decided to stay in Valparaiso for the rest of the weekend and I'm glad I decided to stay!

Tons of hills and really cool graffiti here:












A few really cool things happened when we were staying in Valparaiso. The first is that I stayed in a hostel for the first time and loved the experience! The second thing is that we went to the supermercado (grocery store) and bought food for the weekend to make our own meals (which were delicious!) We decided to buy cheese for sandwiches and had to order it from the deli, which was a bit nerve-wracking because things are measured in kilos here, not pounds and I had to order in Spanish. It all worked out and I ordered a 1/4 kilo of cheese for the 6 of us. This might seem like a small feat but since we are living with families we haven't really had to do too much food shopping so I was pretty proud. The third thing that happened was we went to a famous club called El Huevo (The Egg). It was in all of our guide books and recommended to us by our professor. It's a huge club with four floors and a rooftop and a bunch of different rooms with different music on each floor. Really fun! The other awesome thing that happened in Valpo is that we met some Chilean friends who also live in Santiago!! We had tons of fun going out with them and I'm glad we finally met some native Chileans who are our age! I hope this post wasn't too long and boring to read!

Here are some photos from two of the famous cemeteries in Valpo that we visited: