Valparaiso so far

Hallo! This is how a lot of people answer the phone here and it makes me giggle. I am now in Valparaiso, and I will be here for the next little bit. The rest of my time in Pucon was really good! Lots of work, some really nice walks, and some good eats! There was a panaderia right by my Airbnb that had a bunch of empanadas. They even had a vegetarian option that had corn, tomato, cheese, and basil in it. So good! The picture of the two empanadas shows the difference between baked and fried. The larger one is the vegetarian baked option and the smaller on was a fried cheese one. They both were so delicious. From that same panaderia I got this really good pastry that had Nutella in it!

In my last blog post I was saying that I wanted to try sopapillas and churros to see if they were similar to what I am used to. The sopapilla was very different and the churros were very similar. The sopapilla here was a circular disk with several layers of fried dough and then topped with ketchup and mustard. I was expecting something sweet, so this was quite a shock. It was fine but I don't think I will order another one. The churros were really delicious. I got one filled with manjar which is Chilean dulce de leche and another one filled with chocolate. Unfortunately, I forgot that churros are hollow all the way through, so the fillings went out the bottom and got all over my pants. 

I left Pucon on Friday morning and took an 11-hour bus trip to Santiago. It was a cool drive and fun to see that part of the country, just a long travel day. When I got to Santiago I took an Uber to my hostel. This day also marked 6 months since I had left the United States. This is a pretty huge milestone, and it seemed fitting that I was on a full day bus to celebrate. I cannot believe that I have been traveling for that long and not in the US. I have been to 5 countries so far which is so insane. I am having a great time and so glad that this is my reality! 

On Saturday, I took another bus from Santiago to Valparaiso, and it was about 2 hours. It was an interesting drive because we went through a desert, and I hadn't really seen that side of Chile yet. I got to my Airbnb and then just explored around the city a bit. There's lots of little markets everywhere and tons of street art. I went on a city walking tour on Sunday and learned so much! Valparaiso is a coastal city and has played a really integral role in the development of Chile. Valparaiso is where all of the trade and travel with Santiago happened, so it has a history of native people as well as lots of colonialism. The whole city is built up a huge hillside and there are different neighborhoods based on the hill that you are on. The area where we walked around and where I am staying is Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepcion which are two nicer neighborhoods. So many of the buildings are covered in art and the tour guide explained that artists will talk to the people who own the building and ask to paint a mural there. If the people do not agree then the artists will sometimes "tag" the building and put a mark on it to show that they need to paint over it and that they should do it was a mural. The tour also took us past a 20-meter mural of the history of Chile that went all the way up to present day. Elon Musk was on the present-day section because he is very involved with the extraction of lithium that happens in the north so that Teslas can be made. My little group also got alfajores from this random lady. We walked down a stairway, knocked on her door, and then she gave us alfajores. It was very neat! We also rode up this thing called a funicular. It is basically a little lift that takes groups of 10 people up and down the hills because sometimes it can be tiring to walk up and down them. It only costs 100 Chilean pesos which is about 10 cents. It was really cool to ride up! (In the pictures below, it is that green and red thing on the tracks). I will walk to a lot of the places that we visited because I want to look at the murals again and because there is a restaurant that I want to try. The tour guide asked if we had tried completos yet which are sausages in a bun and then covered in ketchup and mayonnaise. I told him that I am vegetarian, so I had not, and he told me that papaletos are vegetarian and have avocado and a bunch of toppings. So, I will definitely be trying that soon! He told us that mayonnaise is so popular here because it was not available until 2007 because they were not able to ensure that it was salmonella free until then. The tour guide was really cool and had so much information, it was excellent. After the tour, I ended up going to a bar with the other tour attendee and the guide met up with us a little bit later. We talked about our home countries, the other attendee was from Switzerland, and it was really fun. Also, the toilet paper dispenser was outside of the bathroom, so you had to grab the toilet paper before you went in the stall! Wacky! I didn't end up getting back until midnight which was a little bit crazy for me but so good. It has been a minute since I hung out with real life people, so it was a nice time. 

This week is a bit lighter for work because of testing and breaks so I plan to get everything booked for the rest of March and to do some more exploring! This is the first big city that I have been to in Chile so we will see how I like it.