After being at sea for a full day, we arrived at the end of our 16 day ship journey in Valparaiso, Chile. Our ship docked at 5:30 am. We disembarked the ship approximately at 9:30 am to begin our tour of Valparaiso and transportation to Santiago, Chile. We traveled 727 Statued miles from Puerto Montt through slight seas and 59 degrees F.
In 1536, Juan de Saavedra named Valparaiso to honor his native Valparaiso de Cuenca in Seville.
Aboard the ship, we signed up for transportation from the ship to Santiago. Included was a tour of Valparaiso icluding Vina del Mar.
There is little room between the high cliffs and the South Pacific shore, but Valparaiso (and neighboring Vina del Mar) comprise Chile's third largest metropolitan area (after Santiago and Concepcion. Until the Panama Canal opened in 1914, Valpo was one of the busiest ports in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Valparaiso consists of two distinct sections. The orderly modern coastal stretch skirts the bay and serves as commercial center. The other Valpo is much larger and older. Almost entirely residential, it is a series of neighborhoods that cling delicately to the hills that rise abruptly just a few hundred yards from the shore. Each hill is like an individual city laced with twisted streets.
Vina del Mar is popularly known as the Garden City for its manicured subtropical boulevards lined with palm trees and beautiful expansive parks.
Vina has become the playground of Chile's well-to-do. Many wealthy Valparaiso residents built grand houses and mansions here, away from the cramped harbor city, and Vina remains a popular weekend and summer destination fo people who live in Santiaguinos.
As part of our tour on the way to Santiago we visited the Fonk Museum which housed objects from Easter Island & the Chilean Mainland.
Easter Island is one of the most isolated places on earth. It is famous as the site of enormous statues of people that were carved hundreds of years ago. The island lies about 2,300 miles west of Chile. Easter Island has been a Chilean territory since 1888 and is considered as part of the region of Valparaiso.
