Sunday in Valparaiso

We woke up and went for coffee.  We found a small place inside our hotel's building (it has a small mall attached) and ordered our coffee.   Our Spanish being quite weak, the girl behind the counter replied in perfect English to us.  Turns out that she was born in Montreal.

  After coffee, we wandered around taking pictures and feeding the dogs.   Carolyn brought a backpack full of dog food with us for the walk, and by the end of it, there was about 20 happy perros. We did feel a little bit bad later when we saw a few homeless humans but still enjoyed the dogs.   They are actually often quite sweet and friendly when you feed them, and they are exceptionally smart.   They even seem to know the correct time to cross the road.  Im not sure if they look to the humans for their cue or if they actually look at the sign and know when it shows the walky stick man.

   Later on we took an ascensor.  Valparaiso is known for these, as most of Valparaiso's homes are build on the top of a hill with the business district and the docks below.   We took the concepcion ascensor, which turns out to be the oldest one in the city.  Built in 1883, of the 26 built it is one of the remaining 8 that are active.  The ride was only about 1 minute long, but was kinda neat and the view from above was amazing,   Many of the ascensors were build to take the wealthier people up to their homes, so at the top was some pretty amazing buildings.  We spend an hour or so at the top before catching the ascensor back down.

  Next we went to the waterfront and caught a collective boat tour around the harbour.   This was lots of fun too, and we got more amazing pictures.   One thing we learned though, dont anchor your boat in Valparaiso.   One boat we saw was absolutely covered in seagull poop.

  After the boat tour, we hopped on to the train to Vina Del Mar.  Vina is the sister city to Valpo, and they are essentially connected.  The one difference is that Valpo is a working mans old town, and Vina is the newer, beach and playtown for the wealthy.   We didnt spend too much time there, as it just doesnt have the same feel as the rest of Chile.  Last year, Chris, Al and I also felt the same way and only spend the smaller part of a morning there.

On our return train ride to Valpo, we have a man on the train playong guitar and singing.   He had an absolutely amazing voice to go with limited guitar skills.   His voice more than made up for the guitar though, as Carlolyn and I, and the other 40 passengers enjoyed his talents for about 10 minutes of the ride.   After he stopped playing, he collected up what probably was $10 or so and then sat down and talked to Carolyn and I for a few minutes.  He got off the train 1 stop before the end of the line, probably to get on the return direction and do it all over again.  I imagine he makes a decent living doing this.

In the evening we went out to find ourselves dinner.   On our way, wandering around looking for a restaurant, we fed more dogs from another bag of dog food.  After dinner, we headed back to the hotel. Lots of walking again today.  On a side note, I can walk around all day, but Carolyn has excessively long legs and mine are of average length at best.  Occassionally keeping up with the gazelle can be a bit tough.   I dont want to have to jog to do it.