Jewels of the Pacific Viña del Mar and Valpariso, Chile

Hostal with no name 147 Batuco 5,500 pesos a night if you stay more than 3 nights. It´s a fantastic home environment because you´re literally in their house

Viña and Valpo (the Chilean slang... yeah, we´re cool :) have reputations of being colorful and exciting, they definitely lived up to their name. We didn´t even leave the bus station and the fun began.

In the bus terminal we met Antonio and Diego, our first Chilean friends. They proved to be different than anyone else we´d met and they were cool... for one day :) They turned out to be pretty uninterested in... us and kinda everything. But they were friendly enough. They were very serious guys - our jokes weren´t funny and it seemed they stopped listening to our stories after a minute or two. Nothing seemed to make our serious friends crack a smile (except for a foto or two.) They did want to do a show with us, which we agreed to after eating a Chorillana (a typical Chilean dish of meat and french fries.)

From there we took our hard earned lucas (Chilean pesos) and tore up all of the 4 gigantic dance floors at the biggest night club we´d ever seen, funnily named "The Egg."

Still uninterested and smileless (though we did have fun) we said bye to our first Chilean friends.

The next day, we stumbled upon an art festival in the park and a dance show in the theatre. The conversation at the entrance of the Viña Theatre went something like this: "So, what´s happening here today?" "Looks like a Ballet company." "What time does it start?" "Says 8pm." "What time is it now?" "7:55pm" "I mean, we wanna go?" "Sounds good..."

We were wowed by impecable coal mine dances, flawless traditional dances from various South American countries and live music played to perfection. It was an unexpected, jaw-dropping surprise!

A few days later we bought tickets for a bellydance show that was also in the Viña Theatre. Unfortunately, our mouths dropped open because it was so... bad. It was an unexpected, sad disappointment. In fact, Lori went to take a picture of a dancer and I thought "I really do not want to remember this for the rest of my life." The one part of the show we did enjoy was the crazy old lady who, in her I´ve-been-smoking-for-40-years voice (she´s in the background of the photo), introduced each dancer with veils, swords and crazy hats. She was definitely the highlight :)

Another big highlight was Pablo Neruda´s breathtaking house in Valpo. Pablo is a famous Chilean poet and a hero of Lori and me. His house left us inspired with a whimsical energy you can´t find just anywhere. His boat-like house was decorated to a T with an unobstructed panoramic view of the entire city and ocean. With his collection of colored glass bottles, furniture from every corner of the world, rock murals and 3 wives, it´s easy to see where his magical inspiration came from. It was something we won´t soon forget.

We said bye to Viña and Valpo, we were off to Chile´s capital, Santiago.