Saturday, January 3rd

As my usual routine, I woke up and wandered outside.   It is 7:45 on a Saturday, and none of the coffee shops are open yet.    Chile still considers a weekend something special, and nothing much opens until 9am.   Actual shops and stores open somewhere between 11am and noon.   Watched a man from one of the shops bring out a bowl of water and place it on the ground.  Seconds later one of the street dogs headed over for a drink, with a second dog patiently waiting his turn a small distance away.  Just like last trip, you cant help but notice how well the people treat the dogs.   Back in the hotel, we packed our bags to prepare for leaving the city. 

One of the many wine regions of Chile

We arrived in Valparaiso and found our hotel.  It's quite nice considering the low price, and is in a decent area of the town.  In the late afternoon we walked around for about 3 hours taking pictures.   Carolyn seemed to like the architecture, the shops and the slightly less modernized feel of the city, but is quite put off by the poorer condition of the street dogs.   Valpo, although now on the upswing, does have a long way to rise and does have a little bit more of a third world feel to it.  At one time it was one of the major sea ports in the entire world, but fell on very hard times after the construction of the Panama canal, and even harder times after earthquakes and years of dictatorship in the 70s and 80s.

Some locals rowing in the harbour ( am i stating the obvious?  Caption not required?)

Old meets new.   An entirely new and modern building, encased by the previous facade.

You can see the elevator carts going up and down.   Valparaiso is famous for these acensors.

Street art (when its this good you don't call it graffiti)

More street art.

Near our hotel 

We ended the evening by walking to the centre of town and finding a place for dinner.   On our way back, not unlike my last visit to Valpo when I purchased hotdogs for the street dogs, this time Carolyn went into a grocery store and bought a bag of dog food.  She fed some to all of the dogs we saw along the way, although there wasnt tas many as earlier as they must have all headed towards the restaurants for dinner time.   We did end up with one trying to follow us home so tommorrow, with the rest of the bag to go, should be interesting.   If you hear a story about a Pied Piper of Valpo, that will be us.