Chile, Day 10

Valparaiso from a restaurant perch.

Today I traveled by bus from La Serena to Valparaiso. Since the bus was scheduled to leave at 11:35, I woke up at 8, took a shower, and headed a block away for breakfast to Café Colonial, which I knew opened up at 9 (nothing in town opens earlier than that, it seems).



I ordered the “house special breakfast” – homemade pancakes with syrup and cream – and a cup of coffee. It also came with orange juice.

This makes me slightly queasy just looking at it.

Now, before I say anything about the breakfast, let me just repeat something I’ve said previously about Chilean people in general – they like sugar. In a big way. And my breakfast this morning was insanely sweet. My orange juice was so sweet I could barely get it down, and my pancakes, as the photo shows, were not only drowning in syrup, but also made with an insane amount of sugar and then topped with whipped cream. I ate my pancakes – except for maybe two bites at the end – because I didn’t want to waste the food, but it was too much for me. It was also a huge amount of food, and I didn’t get hungry again until around three p.m. or later. Still, the café is rather charming and the women running it were patient with my terrible Spanish. I’d go back there if I had the opportunity, but I’d definitely go with eggs next time.

Café Colonial is at Balmaceda 475. Tel: 543-158. Hours: Monday - Saturday, 9 a.m. - late at night.

From there I returned to my hotel, checked out, then grabbed a taxi to the bus terminal. Unfortunately, the bus was an hour late leaving, and then it broke down in Viña del Mar and the bus drivers weren’t sure how to get us all the way to our destination. But they pulled through, and I arrived at around 7:30 p.m. in Valparaiso.

I sat on the wrong side of the bus for 8 hours. But when the person sitting next to me got up I took a couple of quick snaps.

About two hours north of Valparaiso.

By the time I checked into my hostel it was already 8 p.m. The owner was kind enough to have prepared a map for me full of various bits of information I’d need to know, and helped me find someone to take me on a tour of some local wineries on the weekend. She showed me around the hostel, which is gorgeous (if a little out of the way) and has gorgeous views, and her tiny white poodle named “Poopy” (I think it might be Spanish for “puppy”) demanded that I spend ten minutes scratching her belly.

View from the hostel where I'm staying.

Another view from back of hostel.

Since I basically skipped lunch today I was feeling pretty hungry, and for dinner the hostel owner recommended a restaurant called Café Arte Mirador. She had initially recommended a restaurant that appeared to be ten miles away, but she insisted that this second place was nearby and so I set off to go find it. It was a really nice walk through the Playa Ancha neighborhood where her hostel is located, and I loved the charming, weathered look of the homes that I passed. The restaurant turned out to be just a ten-minute walk away, but rather than enter immediately I wandered around the lookout area and gazed across the city and bay and down over the seaport.




Eventually, though, I went inside Café Arte Mirador.


At first the dirty, wrinkled, and hole-spotted tablecloths threw up a red flag or two, but then I realized that all of Valparaiso is much the same and in any case I’m all for gritty surroundings, even in restaurants.


My waiter was very attentive and helped me choose a local red wine – it was incredibly smooth and well rounded, and I want to give it some props here in case anyone reading this cares to look for it: Exportación, produced by Concha y Toro. Once I’d ordered wine, I also decided on Reitana Meditarraneo (swordfish, I believe) as my entrée and asked for some steamed veggies on the side.


It was a nice, flavorful fish, firm but light in texture, though the portion was somewhat small – at least it was considering that I skipped lunch. And since I left my willpower elsewhere, and conveniently forgot that I had a week’s worth of sugar at breakfast, I did a very bad thing and ordered a piece of chocolate cake and a cappuccino for dessert.

Why do I keep doing this to myself??

So stupid of me. But it did taste good. All throughout the meal, and for a long time afterward, I enjoyed watching night fall over the city from my perch in Playa Ancha. The views from the restaurant were incredible.

Café Arte Mirador can be found at Paseo 21 de Mayo 214. Tel: 228-0944. Web: www.cafeartemirador.cl. Email: cafeartemirador@gmail.com.

On my way back home I chose not to return in a straight line, but wandered around the quiet neighborhood to see what it offered and to get a sense of its end-of-day rhythms. I really like it here – at least my first impressions are very good. I’ll be here for a few more days, and hopefully Valparaiso will continue to grow on me.

City lights on neighboring hill in the background.

Chile, Day 9

I never would have guessed this was possible, but directly beside my room’s small skylight there appears to live a colony of seagulls. And I discovered today that seagulls and chickens have something significant in common: they wake up slightly before the sun rises and proceed with their loud voices to try to wake up the entire world. Even luckier, the roof of my hotel is made of tin, and the seagulls treat it like air force pilots treat aircraft carriers. From 5:30 on, strident cries overhead mixed with the thunderous clanging of seagulls charging back and forth, skidding, and probably running in circles until they were dizzy, on the hotel’s tin roof. I had to laugh into my pillow, which I’d pulled tightly over my head, at my bad luck. I just can’t seem to catch a break as far as sleep goes.

I started off the day sluggishly, but I quickly regained my equilibrium with breakfast at Coffee Express, which is a nice, overpriced place to start the day.

I ordered plaina de huevos, which are apparently eggs fried in a metal pan, as well as toast and a café Americano. The eggs and toast were about as unexciting as you can get, and the 2200 peso price tag ($4.38) seemed a little higher than it should have been considering what it amounted to. The coffee was the same – not bad, but at 800 pesos ($1.60), and a very small amount of coffee at that, I’m not sure it was worth the money.

But the café itself is nice – I appreciated the spaciousness of the place, the glass walls, and the outdoor seating option.

Coffee Express is located on Prat and Balmaceda streets. Tel: 221-673. Hours: 9 a.m. - 9 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. - 9 p.m. on Saturday.

From here I went directly to Kokoro no Niwa, the Japanese garden at the southern part of Parque Pedro de Valdivia. I was glad the skies this morning were overcast, if only because Japanese gardens look better in subdued light, plus it made the air cooler, which is always a plus. I enjoyed the Japanese gardens quite a bit, perhaps because I had it all to myself at the beginning. However, it did occur to me as I walked around that the garden’s maintenance could have been a little better. The surface of one pond was half-covered with grass clippings, the park’s largest rock garden looked like it hadn’t been raked in weeks, and one of the streams was mostly, but not entirely, devoid of water. But I don’t mean to nitpick. Like I said, I enjoyed wandering through the park. The ducks, geese, and other birds there were pleasant to come across, the hydrangeas were bursting with color, and the red bridge in the middle of the park was a nice contrast to all the green everywhere. It’s a nice break from the city and a spot of tranquility where you’d least expect to find it.

Kokoro no Niwa is open from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. and is located in the Parque Pedro de Valdivia. Tel: 217-013.

After this I continued my morning outing toward the ocean, which meant walking west down Avenida Francisco de Aguirre until it ended. I wanted to see the lighthouse that was only 2 km from where I was staying, and from there I would continue south another few km to have lunch. The walk to the lighthouse was interesting, as the area I passed through had an industrial feel to it. The lighthouse definitely looks better from a distance; from up close, it looked like a giant, toy castle that children might play in.

The doors to the lighthouse were all locked, so I couldn’t climb to the top, and because the base was crowded with some rather shady looking people, some of whom were pestering me for money, I decided to head on my way. Walking beside the beach I passed a couple of groups paying soccer, but mostly the wide, gray sands were empty.

It was obviously too cold for people to swim, though I did pass a few surfers running from the water to shore in wetsuits. In any case, I arrived much too early at the area where I wanted to eat, so I sat down and read and people-watched for an hour. Once one o’clock rolled around, I headed to a restaurant called Kardamomo, which was fronted with colorful paintings for sale and covered with bright pink bougainvillea.

It was a lovely spot, and I grabbed a table by a window in back, with a view of the beach and ocean.

I ordered the day’s set menu: tilapia in an herb-cream sauce with potatoes. It came with a cold avocado and cream soup, with a few asparagus heads thrown in for good measure, and a basket of bread smeared with a pizza-flavored sauce.

I was supposed to get dessert, too, but I actually turned it down. Imagine, me turning down dessert! In any case, the lunch was only 5500 pesos (~$11), and it was decent if not great. The location was fantastic, though, and the music selection was thoroughly and coolly “lounge.”

Restaurante Kardamomo is on Avenida del Mar 4000. Tel: 216-066. They open for lunch at 1 p.m. and close late after dinner.

After this I took a taxi back to town – it’s hard to believe that a ten-minute ride really costs $10 here, but what are you going to do when you can’t speak the language – and decided to top off my lunch with some caffeine at a hip little café (with wi-fi!) called Café Centenario, which is on the corner of Cordovez and Los Carrera.

I ordered a mokkachino for 1700 pesos (~$3.40) and hung out at my window seat for a while to read and watch the action in the plaza.

I took it easy for much of what remained of my day, but in the late afternoon I decided to explore La Serena’s market area. The market is called La Recova, and while it doesn’t have a great deal of “typical mercado products,” it’s certainly surrounded by plenty of shops selling meat, produce, beans, and various household items.

I wasn’t planning to have dinner here – I didn’t think anything would be open at 6 – but apparently the restaurants in the market are open all day. On the second floor I was lured into a restaurant called Restaurant Tres A. It had a long balcony with umbrellas to protect customers from the sun, and a view of a church and plaza (the construction below didn’t bother me).

The owners were the friendliest people I’ve met in Chile by far, and they gave me a free pisco sour before I’d even decided to order anything.

But I’m glad I did stay and order. They told me that the house specialty was a dish called congrio pirata, which is basically two grilled conger eel fillets set atop layers of oysters, crab, shrimp, chopped garlic and ají sauce, then covered with “rolled cheese” (queso laminada) and set in a white wine and cilantro sauce.

It was excellent. It was without a doubt the best conger eel I’ve had in Chile so far, but the unique combination of ingredients really won me over. And at only 7500 pesos ($14.94) it was really a pretty good deal -- especially with the free pisco sour, not to mention the free glass of mint liqueur they gave me at the end, too.

In addition, I ordered an ensalada surtida (mixed salad) and glass of red wine.

I was definitely a little tipsy afterward, but being tipsy only made the experience more fun. I highly recommend Restaurant Tres A for anyone who finds themselves hungry early or in the vicinity of La Recova. You can find Tres A on the second floor of Mercado La Recova, which is at the corner of Cienfuegos and Cantournet streets. Tres A can be seen from the plaza beside Iglesia San Agustín.

I returned to my hotel after this, only to find my room filled with long, flying insects whose wings fall off at the slightest physical contact. I have no idea where they came from, but I'm writing this from the hotel lobby. I hope they're gone when I go back, otherwise this may be a very long night -- especially with the seagulls getting ready for an early morning...

Chile, Day 8

Near the Plaza de Armas in La Serena.

I was pretty happy to leave Viña del Mar this morning. I didn’t have the best experience there, and I thought that La Serena would be a better destination for a couple days. No one at my hotel seemed to know how long the bus ride from Viña del Mar to La Serena was, but most people seemed to think 5-6 hours. That was doable, especially with the large reclining seat that I paid for. (Too bad the seat was unable to recline.) I boarded the bus to La Serena at around 10:30, and was not in the least surprised to find that the man sitting next to me was a grouch. I think we shared all of two words between us: the “Buenos dias” I said when he sat down. But that was fine. Sometimes it’s better to travel in your own personal bubble.

The ride ended up taking six and a half hours. The scenery was excellent – not stunning, but really interesting – as we passed through green valleys with rivers cutting through them, then coastal areas with rocky outcroppings offshore, and finally a very dry but rolling region that reminded me in some ways of desert Texas or Arizona.

I only brought a banana with me for food, but I was told we’d stop somewhere for lunch and I wasn’t worried. I think it was at around 2 or 3 p.m. that we finally came to a tourist stop and I bought a seafood empanada for about $3.

Before this, however, an older man boarded the bus during a brief highway stop, and he walked down the aisle with a basket of pastries and sandwiches for sale. He sold about eight of them to a woman in my row, but when I motioned to him he looked at me and picked up his basket and hurried back to the other end of the bus. This is pretty normal here for me, and I’m getting used to it. Sort of.

By the time we arrived in La Serena it was a little after 5 p.m. I got a taxi for the three-block drive to the hostel I’d arranged -- Hostal Maria Casa, which Lonely Planet recommends (if you come to La Serena, please don't stay there) -- but the owner had given away my room half an hour earlier. Why? I have no idea. Instead of apologizing, he told me to follow his girlfriend to another hostel he wanted me to stay at – he wouldn’t let me use the hostel’s phone to see if there were vacancies anywhere else – so I grabbed my luggage and followed his girlfriend for about four blocks. She dropped me off and hurried away – probably because she knew I wasn’t about to stay in such a pit as that. I thanked the owner of the second hostel for showing me the different rooms, then I consulted my guidebook map and walked about ten more blocks to look for other places. The first two places I tried were also fully booked, but luckily the third place I tried had a room for one night. Unfortunately, the door lock was broken, but if I didn’t mind that I could have it. I said sure. I was too sweaty and tired to say no.

I unloaded my things in my room, asked the receptionist to keep an eye on my door, and went around the town to take a few photos and get dinner. After wandering through La Serena for a while, and admiring its small Plaza de Armas, I came upon a restaurant called Restaurant La Serena.

It looked very “local” from the outside, and when I stepped inside I actually liked the gritty look of the place. I could have done without the balloons and streamers, but hey, it’s their restaurant and if they want balloons and streamers I’m fine with that.

I ended up ordering a small mixed salad (it came with lettuce, cabbage, beets, cauliflower, cucumber, tomatoes, and avocado) and a tabla de ave (roasted chicken with fried green pepper and onions, piled on top of what must have been a full kilo of French fries). I also ordered a Cristol beer.

The food was an enormous amount, and I ate just about everything but the beets and maybe 1/4 of the fries. When I left the place, I was waddling. The food was very good, and I recommend it with the caveat that it took me 30 minutes to get my order, and 20 minutes after asking for my check I had to go directly to the cashier, where I paid 6100 pesos (~$12).

La Serena Restaurant can be found at O'Higgins 590. Tel: 211-962. Email: grillbarserena@hotmail.com.