Vina Del Mar – Chile Coastal City – 3 Days                                        27^th April 2019

Taking our time on this great morning having our wonderful brekky banquet in the sun room overlooking the Pacific Ocean in our Gran Hotel in Valparaiso which almost makes up for our continued very ‘low lukewarm’ shower that seems not fixed by management. Food was plentiful at the brekky and we seem to have the sunroom almost to ourselves, hence our food intake somewhat increased, truth be told.

My previous post explained the hot water issue whereby Reception informed us at our checkout; was to run the hot water tap by some 15mins minimum for the hot water to eventually come through. Can you believe 15mins? Ridiculous!

Not being in a hurry for the day we still had Reception organise a taxi at some point to take us to the adjacent city of Vin Del Mar. We were planning to sit out on the walkway on the bench seats and soak in more sun and people watch as they walk past however, Reception notified us the taxi is only 5 minutes away. Communication is always a surprise outcome here in Sth America. Now we are in ‘hurry’ mode with the taxi driver urging us up the alley way to the street at the rear of the hotel.

Taxi drivers are like wannabe racing drivers, sort of hooning at times. I think they enjoy the downhill run and the hairpin bends and tight streets. Taking the main road through the centre of Valparaiso it didn’t take long to round the headland to a completely new view of beach and more surprising beachside development. With a few street turns, we enter an older part of the CBD shopping area and a side driveway to our new resort, Gala Hotel. We are warmly welcomed by 2 young ladies at Reception and the resort is much younger than our previous Gran Hotel, with a lift and some 15floors high.

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Reception has enabled a room earlier than usual on the 13th floor for our next 3 nights. Luckily, the valet showed us to our room as it turned out to be a bit of a maze. We get out of the lift on the 13^th floor, turn left to the stairs to the 14^th floor, then walk the shortish hallway to a set of stairs down to the 13^th again & then to Room 1303. Whew!!! Should have used some bread crumbs to find our way back again to the lift. Certainly, a quirky high rise.

We partly unpacked and successfully used our skills to backtrack to the lift and out through Reception with the staff showing warm smiles and nods of their heads with a wave. A very pleasing warmth. First, in venturing out to the city we must find urgently a laundry that would have a quick turnaround for our clothes are becoming quite limited. Google Maps have identified only a couple close by and most are already shut as it must be siesta time. We are lucky to find one close by but we cannot afford to lose our way due to their pressing closing time. The laundry is located on what appears to be the newer section of the city on the other side of the water channel.

Our hotel backs onto the Estero Vina Del Mar (river looking) and there are about 6 bridges spanning the estuary so we take the closest one of course. An Estero is an estuary or inlet used as a tidal drainage channel in populated districts. This estuary follows down from the Estero Marga Marga River. The mouth of this estuary is dammed up by huge volumes of sand stopping it within metres of entering the Pacific Ocean. If the dam was not in place there would be a dry river bed normally showing.

Once you get your head around the street name system we eventually stumbled upon the laundry. The lady asked us for our ID (no reason given, so that’s a mystery), gave us a good price $6US (could have been dearer & still cheaper than our hotel) and we can pick up the next day. A winner!!!

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Some streets have a lot of other country & town names e.g Ecuador, Quillota, Peru, etc. The main streets running parallel to the beach front are in numbers 1 Poniente, 2 Poniente, 3 Poniente, etc to 6 Poniente. Further away from the beaches the streets change to 1 Oriente to 6 Oriente. The streets running off the beach front at 90° are 1 Norte (parallel to the estuary) right up to 14 Norte. All much like New York I found in numbering streets.

Accomplishing the laundry feat, we head towards the smell of the beach/ ocean some minutes away and walk along the walkway parallel to the roadway (av, Peru) and beach line. Here we see a longitudinal rock wall about 1metre high with large boulders immediately behind the wall as a means to calm the wild surf at times and this wall goes on for approx. 150 metres.  Along the walkway, a myriad of university looking young people are setting up their goods for a market. They use a canvas cloth or tablecloths strewn along the wall to display their trinkets of chains, stones, gems, beanies, sunglasses, scarves, etc.

While admiring the trinkets we note there are several story book type carriages that are horse drawn along the cobblestone roadway with tourists aboard to see more of the coastline. The horses are quite old but look in good care. They have a park area assigned up near the casino at the southern end of the beach near the estuary with plenty of shade and drink. Not far from this park is our first café, Tierra del Fuego, with outdoor seating under umbrellas so that’s a few boxes ticked for us to enjoy and take in the new surroundings. The coffee was superb and it certainly is a popular place. They have a side counter with numerous flavours of gelato which was also popular.

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We take our time wandering along the beach, mainly using the concrete pathway looking at everything basically without any detailed investigation. The main beach restaurant is Tierra de Fuego, a Chilean food restaurant but Scott & I much prefer the cosy, natural food places rather than the upmarket formal type places. This restaurant is very well patronised and looks newly built right on the beach.

For a late lunch we find Bravissimo Las Salinas, right on the beach and a real open feel as well as an internal area. We chose the bright sunshine on the deck area.  This café turned out to be our food place over the next few days.

Almost halfway down the extended beach area there is an old wharf pier, although it has been restored significantly. Muelle Vergara Pier is located on Playa Acapulco (playa means beach) and was originally built in 1895 and after being derelict for decades was beautifully remodelled in 2016. It is for pedestrian use only and a great place to savour the ocean and to chill out. 

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We walk the beach to approx. 50% about 3klms and then return to find a suitable vegetarian restaurant. We can only find one and it was a great little café and we were the only one’s present. It offered great food and the chef was the owner. He spoke good English and explained some local knowledge. Now, please don’t assume anything, but the café is called ‘Romeo sin Julieta’ and we didn’t ask for the romantic setting .. OK? It is located @ 60 3Norte. There are plenty of meat places on the main streets and the usual USA fast foods and the only one we will visit is Starbucks, for coffee. We are perusing in the better part of the city with its numerous skyscraper hotels and upmarket restaurants and night life.

Every night is a great unwind .. we don’t worry about any TV .. just listen to music on Youtube and Scott with his upmarket phone with all the add ons. Each morning we have our windows to see down towards the castle and a brief view of the ocean and to see what weather is about to spring upon us.

Our second day (it’s MY Birthday!!!) and not to over celebrate we walk the streets of the older part of town among the numerous pedestrian traffic. Nothing much to see here and every street was basically the same as what we just experienced so we venture back towards the ocean heading towards the Eastern end headland where it borders close to Valparaiso (Vina Del Mar beach basically runs North to South whereas Valparaiso runs East to West). In the older section we hadn’t come across anywhere inviting to have breakfast so we’ll tough it out and search the beach places.

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At this ‘border’ headland we find a castle called Castillo Wulff or Wulff Castle, which offers a great view looking back towards Valparaiso (photo).  Heading back to Vina Del Mar beach from the castle the next building is ‘ship like’ and a hotel/ restaurant called Cap Oucal. Immediately below this hotel the rocks/ boulders sit proudly out of the ocean and is a grand place for the native water birds (much like our Australian Cormorants) to mingle and observe the mere humans taking photographs above.

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We spend most of the day walking further along the beach, checking out the various naval guns placed in a little park adjacent to the beach pathway and the largest sun dial I have ever seen. In the distance we can see the Northern headland called Cabanas Punta Osas with a naval base opposite and before this headland Scott becomes excited as he spies a massive set of pull up exercise bars for the fitness fanatics. We eventually found a trail of sorts to climb the headland but it was no great achievement nor an inspiring view but at least we climbed it. To the North of this headland is the beach city of Renaca but we cannot do this area such is our itinerary. I believe it is developing well and may well be the better tourist spot than Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar.

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On our way back towards the food places and our hostel Scott is almost begging me to revisit the chin up bars tomorrow to get into more fitness. He is stating he is withering away back to a lightweight. I can’t see it but he looks for body perfection. With nothing else appearing on the calendar we will revisit.

Speaking of revisit, we lurch back to Bravissimo Las Salinas for a late lunch with superb juices for my celebratory birthday. Cheers to another added number of years walking this earth. We walk back to the hotel for a small rest up but Scott sees a large book shop as he is in need of another book to read. I couldn’t count how many books are in this shop but the shelves go from floor to ceiling (4m high) on all 4 walls with 4 rows of centre shelves. We ask where the English book are and we are shown a shelf with about 6 books. You’re kidding!!! Well, we are in a Spanish part of the world. To further celebrate my birthday, we call in to collect our laundry and it is superbly done and we pass on our many thanks to the lady once again. I guess it is the best present and timely.

After our little rest up and it now dark, we seek out our restaurant, Romeo sin Julieta for another great meal but alas, it is closed. The chef/ owner decides on his own operating hours so we walk the streets and the only inviting place and considering the timeframe is Starbucks. It is far better than any Starbucks in Australia.  Upon our return to the hotel I check out my fitness app and it states we walked 12klms today.

Another great morning and our last full day here in Vina Del Mar so we anticipate a very lazy type day with hitting the pavement again. Scott gives me his book he has finished and one that he quoted me many times on our treks. It is called “Can’t Hurt Me” from a Navy Seal (David Goggins) with an impeccable record of human achievement within the defence force and in his community. A definite MUST read!

We do the usual coffee, brekky, lunch and then walk past the Muelle Vergara Pier yet again and all the way down the beachfront to Scott’s beloved chin up bars. Here he put’s in an hour & 40 minutes, almost non-stop. I read the book and notice the sweat coming down my face sitting in the sun. There are no trees for shade here. On our way back we can feel the sea breeze cooling us down and we come back towards our first day experience of the boardwalk, horse carriages and knick-knack shops and rock wall sellers.

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Here we find a young man with an assortment of manufactured sea shell type musical instruments. He is quite pleased knowing we are Australians. He immediately picks up his giant trumpet sea shell instrument (the size of him) and the sounds are synonymous with our Indigenous Didgeridoos back home with their haunting and vibratory sounds. It is amazing to see how he is doing this. What a treat!

By the way, I am celebrating two days of my birthday (International Date Line provides an Australian and a Sth America birthday) so it’s off to find some great food and drink. After completing 13klms today we check out the sunset from our hotel and notice we head back to Santiago tomorrow to our Crowne Plaza Hotel for our final 3 days in Sth America. Overall, both Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar were rather disappointing and wished we had better alternatives or even another trek although I believe the treks are a lot more expensive to undertake from the city of Santiago. Going further South is even more expensive, especially the cruise routes.

Again, many thanks for reading my blogs and if you continue to scroll down there are some 24 now, I believe. Appreciate any comments you may wish to convey. Stay safe and travel more.