Valparaiso, in Spanish, has a meaning that contradicts its current state of being. El Paraiso is one of their words for heaven, and Val, is a contraction of va and el, meaning 'to go' or 'going to heaven'. The city has a long history as one of the most important ports in the whole of the continent. It has been looted and sacked and raided and burned enough times that I am sympathetic to its state in this moment. Each time something horrible happened to it, it was rebuilt and reinhabited, only to be trashed again later on down the line. In the early part of the 1900's it was leveled by a massive earthquake. So much has happened there in the last few hundred years it is understandable that it isn't in the best of shape, but still, this crumbling condition did take me a little bit by surprise. When I first got off the bus, and walked out into the craziness of the street, I was invigorated by the energy, but this enthusiasm was quickly curbed by the sights and smells of the district that I was in on the north side of the town. I got to my hostel with a minimal amount of hassle, but I left soon after to find some food and my subsequent walk around woke me up to how things are there. My initial impression of the noise and smell was reminiscent of Asia. Like a stinky market in a backwater part of Bangkok or Phnom Penh. These streets were permanently stained with all manner of muck and debris and the air was ripe with the smell of rotten things. Being a port, you expect the smell of fish, but this was something really, really intense. I strolled through the stalls of produce and meat and fish and other random things, all sitting in the open sun of the early afternoon. People yelled in all directions in some language particular to the market. I ducked in and out of a few sketchy restaurants and found, after quite a stroll, a good place to eat. That was the best place I found actually. With all the market action I assume that most people were doing their eating at home.
The streets of Valparaiso have a certain menace to them. The people have a worn down gait and their faces are less taken care of than in Santiago and other places I've seen here in Chile. There is graffiti everywhere, there are people laying in the filthy street gutters with their eyes diverted, letting long abused cardboard signs do the begging for them. The buildings have an interesting look to them, architecturally speaking, despite the smeared seaside grime that coats them. As you look back across the city you see it's initial visual appeal. It pulls up and away from the bay and the colored houses hug the contours of many of the hills that roll along the coast. Under a bright blue sky, the red and yellow and blue of the houses glow from a distance and make it seem a much happier place than the streets would imply.
The place could be described as noise and aroma. Loud noise and stank aroma. If the implied name of 'heaven' had to be invoked, then it could be considered to be the 'heaven of the downtrodden' or the 'grim paradise of the grizzled'. For sure it could be acknowledged as a disagreeable tourist destination...but I ended up seeing it as more than that. I spent a few days walking around in the winding streets filled with dogs and beggars and garbage and broken glass, and I think I got a taste of why it is an inspiration to people. As I mentioned before, Pablo Neruda had a house built there, in the heights above the chaos, and I was interested in why he decided to station himself there to write. What I began to recognize was, that built in amongst this gnarliness were a million little stories in every passing moment. And these are the kind of stories that bring us to emotion, sometimes strong emotion. Stories of pain and loss and things not working out. Stories of the roughness of difficult love in the gritty real world...far from the glitz of any generation's glamour centers...it is a living ruin of a history that is strong and proud. I can imagine Pablo walking the morning streets, eating empanadas and berlines and taking in the vertigo that swirled around him. I can imagine an artist walking through the bustle, watching the actions and faces of the denizens before returning to a room with a paintbrush and an easel, a pen and a notebook or a guitar and a pick. I was inspired in many unexpected ways while doing this same camino. I only wish I had my guitar present to do something with it all.
On the first afternoon I was there I walked to one of the fifteen or so ascensores (slanted elevators) that have been built to bring people from the lower, sea level part of the city to the upper more residential parts and vice versa. These are seemingly ancient contraptions of wood and steel that crackle and groan as they haul you up an incline on an old metal track. No matter how dangerous these things would seem to a New Worlder, they are certainly a point of interest, and they have worked without incident for the whole of their lives. I got out at the top of what was almost a sheer bluff and was immediately confronted by the first growling mutt of a dog of the day. I skirted this grumpy little bastard and walked further up the winding hills. I was at this point up amongst the colored houses and it was really neat to see the people living inside and out in front of these quiet residences. The racket of the city could still be heard down below, but it was a din in the distance and here the slow summer afternoon seemed to be passed more enjoyably. Not that there wasn't broken glass and pungent odors to be found here as well. There were. But I ended up really liking the day that I had walking around up there.
The next morning I walked out of the hostel into the chilled morning fog of the city. It was cold, the first time I needed my jacket since Antarctica. I went up to La Sebastiana, which is the old Neruda residence of Valparaiso. The property can be explored without a guide, the only of his three houses that operates in this way, and it consists of the house itself and then an art gallery that displays different pieces of Neruda-inspired art. The display I saw was rad, a 1960 collaboration between Neruda and his good friend Pablo Picasso! It was inspired by a long poem that Neruda had written about the civil war in Spain called "Toro". The paintings were classic Picasso from the 'bull' period and you could tell that he was inspired while he painted. From there I walked through the narrow halls and rooms that made up his house. As I talked about before, Neruda was a great collector and this house was full of things made by hand from all over the globe. The collections there and in Santiago would be small in comparison to the collection that he had in his Isla Negra home, which I would visit the next day. The Valparaiso home was set more or less central on the tall hills behind the port's heart, and from his large windows one could see across almost all of the sprawl. The steeples of the churches, the scattered colors of the houses, the ships moving in the busy bay and the clouds that seamlessly slide across the sky. It was impressive. His house seemed magically quiet, the grounds filled with palm trees and all sorts of plants and flowers. Much stonework had been done and it had a distinctly old world feel despite the degree of modernity it possessed. I spent the rest of the day meandering the gnarled streets and watching those faces of the people. One moment that left an impression was when I came to a lookout point over the old part of the city and drifting up from the depths of the streets below was the sad, gypsy sound of a sitar being played. It made the place sound haunted and I could feel a better connection to the slowly pulsing heart of the place while I listened and watched the boats and cars and humans passing. I found my way down a maze of steps and after some hunting, I located the player. A long haired bohemian looking man with very light skin. He had his eyes downcast and even in between songs he wouldn't look at anyone. I put some money in his case and he looked up. I smiled and his face registered nothing. It was as stone and weathered as the street he was sitting on. Our eyes were locked for a split second, but I could sense the loss and lack of his life and again I came closer to understanding the city itself.
Yesterday I got up early and headed down to Isla Negra on the bus. It is a little over a hour down the coast from Valparaiso and has a distinctly different feel. I was expecting a somewhat touristy feel, owing to the fact that it is the largest and most important of Neruda's houses, and while there was a little of this sort of vibe, it was a lot less than expected. I ate a huge fried cheese empanada and then strolled down through the fragrant seaside forest to his house on the rocks. Let me just tell ya that this place is amazing! I am totally inspired! It is once again built in the form of an old boat body, and it is just full, I mean FULL, of things that he collected from all over the place. There is a giant collection of ships in bottles, butterflies carefully pinned in cases, wooden siren women from the front of ships, paintings, sculptures, seashells, carvings, masks, stones, and many, many more things. I marvelled at the variety of these things and wished that I had a better way of getting stuff back home from places far away!! (More money is the answer to that one...guess I shoulda been a lawyer of something.) Neruda is buried with his third wife, Matilde, in the yard between the house and the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean, just a few feet from the house. After checking out the memorial, I headed to the beach for another empanada. The waves there are giant and crash with the roar of a blue-gray explosion. I enjoyed this maritime rythme for a while and then headed back to the city to the north.
This morning I bussed back to Santiago, where I sit at this moment. It is a short stopover this time, as I will be departing in the morning to meet up with a buddy back across the Cordillera in Mendoza. I was not sad to leave Valparaiso, as I was when I left Cusco and Buenos Aires, but I did feel glad to have gone there. It really isn't much like San Francisco, (they call it 'Little San Francisco') except for that it is built on hills and is full of people and history. But that is ok. I am glad that it doesn't try for that name. It has it's own identity and that is a good thing, no matter how run down that identity may seem to those of us who come from the outside. I am still not sure about the 'cultural capital' moniker that the place holds. I think if I were to have a 'cultural capital' in my country, I would do a little bit of something to make it appeal to the people who come there with the expecations that such a name may give birth to. I always try to travel without pretense, to arrive to a place open to what it may be like. It is egotistical, really, to hope that a place will be what you want it to be. I guess it's why the wisemen say, "Expectation is the root of disappointment." (Expectation does have a habit of seeping in though, I wouldn't deny that.)
Maybe I wouldn't recommend this place to just any traveller; maybe it would be the kind of place that a person could enjoy, but in a not-so-traditional kind of sense for a tourist. It did make a strange sort of mark on me. In my mind, in my imagination, and in a sort of sadness in my heart. It may sound sort of cheesy to say that, but when one has witnessed that certain kind of melancholy in the world, one can recognize it anywhere, especially in Valparaiso.
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