Valparaíso’s key feature is its port. From the time Christopher Columbus made his
landing (I balk at the much used phrase ‘discovered South America’ being as the
folk living here at the time of his landing were perfectly aware of their
existence beforehand) the port has been
a major hub for trade routes through the Americas and with Europe and Asia, and
the influence of the different countries is clearly visible in the towns
architecture . Apparently the opening of
the Panama Canal lessened the sea-traffic passing through Valpo, but you can
still clearly see the ports importance as a hub of trade from its colourful
stacks of containers piled high, mirroring the multi-colored stacks of houses
clustering up the sides of Valpo’s cerros.
The balcony of Emma and James’ home Casa
Leighton looks out over the port, which to the eye appears very still. My curiosity about port activity was
triggered and so I used the techniques I learned from participating in my
brother Daniel’s global time-lapse project
1 day 6 cities and set up a 24 hour time-lapse overnight from Saturday
9th from 5.24pm to Sunday 10th
5.23pm.
This resulting 2-minute video is
fascinating. It shows that the activity
in the port never stops, confirming what Emma’s flat mate Mariella had already
told us. Mariella works for a company that ships containers worldwide and we
were joking that we could see her at work in the office building or that it is
her popping in in the middle of the night when the lights of one floor flash on
in the video. The video also shows the
cruise liner leaving, the on-and-off of lights all over the cerros, the
containers being moved and stacked by the cranes and one very erratically
steered boat who Emma decided must be controlled by someone learning to drive. My favourite aspect of the video is the shift
of light and colour at dawn in particular.
The video also reveals the movement one of
the ‘ascensors’ on the far hill, and that the stop at 11pm at night. These ancient and rickety lifts are a
particular feature of hilly Valparaíso,
and indeed the one scaling Cerro Alegre served as my introduction to the city
when Emma listed it as one of the ‘clues’ on my route to their house on my
first day.
I only had the one ascensor- ascension, but
can see they must be very useful for locals of the city that is so incredibly
hilly and full of steps. Indeed we did
wonder how anyone in a wheelchair would manage the city, particularly after a
trip up ‘Taller Polanco” which is a vertical lift that takes you up to a
mirador and then leads straight out onto multiple steps.
As Mariella had predicted at the beginning
of the week I was again exhilarated by all the amazing graffiti. A lot of the imagery around this area was
particularly surreal, allowing me to put into practice the use of the new vocab
‘esta bien volado’, coming from the workd ‘volar’ ‘to fly’, meaning more or
less, ‘it’s really trippy’!
So each of these hills or cerros have their
own name, atmosphere and ascensor, and where their feet meet you have ‘El
Plano’. This flat part of Valparaíso
leads from the hills to the port and was apparently constructed
artificially. Connecting the plain and
the cerros are swarms of buses and ‘trolley buses’ which are similar to trams
in running on overhead wires but don’t use tracks. There are no specific stops, you hail them
and jump off them wherever you like.
Surprising perhaps for such a hilly city plenty of folk zip around on
bikes and you also see lots of runners.
Emma, James and I even joined them, running alongside the sea where a
railway runs the length of the waterfront and yes does have given stops!
Our main mode of transport was walking, and
another interesting observation as we went were a number of shells of
buildings. Crumbling, scruffy, generally
overgrown with grasses and reeds and strewn with rubbish, like the one in the image above, it was
surprising to learn from Mariella that the reason for their emptiness was that
they were historically or architecturally significant buildings belonging to
“El Patrimonio de la Humanidad” and therefore protected against development by
investors. When I looked this up online,
I learned that on 2nd July 2003 Valparaíso was named as a World
Heritage Site by Valparaíso. Strange
then that the regulation whose intention is to protect the buildings prevents
even preservation work being done.
Another stop-off on our walking was the
cemetery. This was a place where
preservation was allowed (grave repairs were going on) and another ‘mirador’ or
place where you could see out across great views of the city. In contrast to the sometimes-somber feel of
UK cemeteries, this one felt light, calming and welcoming (perhaps a
weather-influenced characteristic, or it not holding any lost loved ones??) There was one pair of graves where the whole
length was covered in a carpet of grass.
I was touched by a couple of flowers growing up from the grass which
seemed a beautiful illustration of the cyclical nature of life an death, here
new life growing from old.
One of the old men repairing the grave in
the cemetery was Osvaldo, an extremely friendly and chatty fellow with a brilliantly
warm and genuine smile. He told Emma
and I that he’d been contracted in from Santiago to repair the grave, which had
been damaged in the 2010 earthquake. This
earthquake often came into conversation in Valparaíso, where tragically one mistaken
call caused more deaths than necessary in the region when people who had been
evacuated returned to their homes prematurely.
Grave-repairing Osvaldo, who must have been
in his 60’s laughed at Emma’s question about carrying his materials up the hill
(piles of concrete slabs and cement mix) and said the of Valparaíso are
difficult for an old person. Happily
this warmth and openness seem to be characteristics shared by all Chilean
people. Wherever Emma, James or I have
been this week folk are really quick to chat with us, I love it!
J
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