La Ultima Dia en Valparaiso, que lastima!

It was still raining as we awoke but by the end of breakfast the sky had cleared and a most glorious clear blue sky appeared. We had to figure out our next move though it was tempting to stay a few more days here at the Casa Verde Limon as it is quite comfortable in the shared living space! Alas, our room is rented out tomorrow night, Saturday, 30 October, so we must move on. Our next destination will be Talca, south of Santiago, a university town. We'll get a fairly early start in the morning to bus back to Santiago, nearly two hours, switching buses for the 3 1/2 hour ride to central Chile.

Today we visited our second Pablo Neruda house high on the hill. We toured the cemetery just above the hostel before grabbing a collectivo ride up the hill. A collectivo is a taxi with a specific route that many people share. You have to know the number of the route, like a bus. You wait in line at the correct pickup location and when the taxi is full off you go! The routes seem to be those streets that a bus would never be able to navigate because they are winding and very steep! Crazy drivers and old beat-up cars make the ride exciting, like a carnival ride!



We walked down passing parks, tiled street lamps, and shambles of homes built into the side of the rock. It makes Venice seem like it is well organized, the city plan has literally no plan at all. People must just grab space wherever they can and built cement steps to it afterward. Many places we passed by on our way down today would have no car access whatsoever! How fires could be extinguished is anyone's guess!



Sitting in the central parks we enjoyed watching children climb on statues, splash in the fountain water and ride rentable tricycles around without care! Too bad our camera's battery was dead most of the afternoon, it was beautiful outside today!