Being Nice (not me, obviously)

Kyle's doing something nice. Go check it out and, should you feel the need to be a good person, feel free to help. You might even win a prize.

Plaza Sotomayor-Way Before and After

So after a quick bit of research after Fiona's comment in yesterday's post about the 1906 Earthquake I came across these images on the ligamar website

Fig. Nº 3. Año 1883. Plaza Rafael Sotomayor.
1. La Aduana de Stevenson, (1833).Desde 1856, Intendencia Provincial.
2. La Aduana de San Agustín, (1839). Tribunales de Justicia.
3. Plazuela de San Agustín. Plazuela de los Tribunales.
4. La calle del Comercio. Desde 1880, calle Arturo Prat.
5. La casa de Juan Mouat, (1843) mal llamada casa de Lord Cochrane.
6. La calle de la Planchada. Desde 1880, calle Ignacio Serrano.
7. La primera plaza de la Aduana. Desde 1881, plaza Rafael Sotomayor.
8. Segundo edificio del Correo, (1869).
9. Banco de Valparaíso, (1858).
10. Edifico de Bomberos, tras la remodelación de 1875.
11. Monumento a Lord Cochrane, inaugurado en 1873.
12. Estación Puerto.
13. Bolsa Comercial (1858), a punto de demolerse para dar paso al Monumento mausoleo de los Héroes de Iquique.
14. Jardín de la Bolsa.
15. Avenida Errázuriz, desde 1875.
16. Cajón de la Compañía de Diques Flotantes. Muelle Provisorio.
17. Edificio Rose-Innes.

Fig. Nº 4. Año 2000. Plaza Rafael Sotomayor.
1. Edificio de la Comandancia en Jefe de la Armada, (1910).
2. Plaza Rafael Sotomayor.
3. Edificio de los Tribunales de Justicia, (1937).
4. Plazuela de los Tribunales.
5. Ministerio de la Cultura, ex Correo, (1944).
6. Ex bar Antofagasta.
7. Hotel Reina Victoria.
8. Cuerpo Bomberos, (1955).
9. Edificio Grace, hoy Compañía Sudamericana de Vapores.
10. Edificio Los Héroes, (1980).
11. Estación Puerto, (1937).
12. Edificio de la Aduana, (1930).

They show the Plaza Sotomayor as it appeared in 1883 and as it is now. It won't be for much longer though (although the basic building layout will be the same). The Plaza is due to be renovated and completely changed again...Judging by the speed of every other municipal project, the remodelling should be finished sometime around 2078. According to the news last year, they should be finished early next year.

They might want to think about starting.

Valparaiso Earthquake 1906 II

Some more images from the 1906 earthquake in Valparaiso. Part I is here

Plazuela Bellavista in ruins. Plazuela Bellavista is now Plaza Bellavista after the magnificent decision to demolish the Edificio Brown in the 70s.


Calle Condell in Barrio Puerto


A Panoramic view of the Almendral. I can't work out where the photo was taken-I think probably from Cerro Bellavista.

I love Steve Bell:

Thai Food in Chile: Do It Yourself

One of the complaints most foreigners have about Chile is the lack of decent-and spicy- Asian food. Chinese food here is beyond appalling and Thai and Indian cuisine is watered down and Chileanised so much that it resembles the original only in name.

Now to get around this, you have to cook your own. If you live in Santiasco, then you have easy access to the Chinese and Korean supermarkets in Patronato where you can buy all the sauces, frozen dim-sum, noodles and other imported goodies your little hearts desire. If you live on the coast, however, you're screwed. But not anymore...

Both Jumbo and Lider now stock a reasonable variety of imported Asian spices and sauces. The best find was the authentic Thai curry pastes in Lider in Vina (also sold in a little store on Arlegui). Red, green and yellow are available and mixed in with the Thai coconut milk from Lider you can make a fantastic Thai curry.

The Thai pastes from Jumbo (there's Tom Yum and a couple of others) are really good for making proper fried rice. Jumbo's coconut milk is an absurd rip off at 2400 pesos, however. Lider's Thai stuff is about 800 pesos. The curry pastes cost around 2500 pesos and last forever.

Now, let's hope that real Indian spices make it over here soon as well...

Valparaiso Earthquake 1906

Another of the books available for download on Memoria Chilena is entitled 'The Catastrophe of August 16 1906 in the Republic of Chile'. A better name could not be found.

The earthquake that hit Valparaiso at 7.55pm on that day was catastrophic. Around 3000 people died during the quake and countless more in the days that followed due to their injuries. 20,000 people were seriously injured. Much of Barrio El Almendral was flattened, along with a fair proportion of Barrio Puerto. In the hills, Cerros Carcel y Merced were the most affected. Cerros Alegre y Concepcion, the richest, most upmarket (as they still are) and mainly foreign neighbourhoods were barely affected due to the hills being pretty solid bedrock.

People were hit by falling masonry, crushed in their houses or burnt alive due to the fires that raged in the days after the event. Looters were summarily executed. Buildings continued to topple for days after the quake and more were demolished for being structurally unsound. Material losses were estimated at over 300 million pesos (I have no idea what that amount would be in today's money. Several hundred million Dollars I should imagine). The cost of reconstruction, many times that amount.

Map marking the worst hit areas:


Over the next few days and weeks I'll post more photos from after the disaster. Here are a few to get started.

Plaza Victoria:


Teatro Victoria:


Calle Victoria:

Bodies:

Banks of Valparaiso II: Old School

A while ago, I posted about the banks here in Valparaiso. It turns out that I'm not the first person to have this idea. Whilst searching through the information on Memoria Chilena I came across a great book called Valparaiso 1536-1910 which had been scanned and uploaded from the original housed in the Biblioteca Nacional. The book can be downloaded and is an extremely detailed history of Valparaiso, Chile. At some point I might even get around to reading the text and not just look at the old photos. Memoria Chilena is a really good source of information in general for Chilean history, by the way.

Anyway, here are photos from sometime between 1906-1910 of all the banks in Valparaiso. The images are quite grainy as I've had to adjust them a little. The original scanned and uploaded book is really bright and it's tricky to see many of the photos. I've done my best to make them a little easier on the eye.

As far as I can tell, the only bank still functioning and in its original location is the Banco de Chile. The Anglo Sud-Americano building is now occupied by the banking monster Santander. Many of the other buildings I don't actually recognise but I'll keep my eye out when I'm wandering around in future.

Fiestas Patrias: Meat, Sand, Rail, Hill

I was dreading Fiestas Patrias. This area of the country usually turns into a complete nightmare of traffic and people during long weekends, bank holidays and school holidays. This makes it impossible or extremely stressful to get around in car, bus or even walking.

However, for some reason, Valpo and Vina were completely empty all of last week and even over the weekend. I have no idea why this was so and it even caught out the police. They were clearly expecting Sunday evening traffic chaos and were out in force yesterday but there were barely any cars on the road at all. It was quieter than a normal Sunday weekend in mid-winter. Very strange, but also very enjoyable for everyone that decided to stay in town for the holidays.

I didn't get up to all that much Fiestas Patrias-y over the last week. As I mentioned in the last post, the FPs don't really mean anything to me personally so it's hard to get excited. But I still did a few interesting things.

I did make it to a Fonda at the Sporting Club de Valparaiso in Vina. A Fonda is kind of like a little fair with stalls selling crap (it's FP tradition to sell Hello Kitty products and cheap sunglasses), a few fairground rides and dozens of little food stalls all selling the same things: BBQ beef, sausage sandwiches, empanadas, beer and chicha. It was pretty good fun.


The most entertaining part was when we were waiting for some more friends by the obvious meeting point of the Ferris Wheel. The motor malfunctioned and the wheel sped up to a fairly speedy speed and wouldn't be made to stop for well over 10 minutes. Eventually the police arrived with a mechanic and he got it to stop. Some of the children who got off were delighted with their ride, some were crying. The parents looked terrified.



We decided not to go on the Ferris Wheel.

I went back to the dunes in Con Con with a friend. We stopped off for lunch at this tiny little fish restaurant on the way where we had really good food at absurdly cheap prices in what is little more than a glorified tree house with a kitchen attached. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo and can't remember the name but next time I go I'll remember to...

After that, we headed for the dunes. It wasn't as much fun as last time. We got stuck. At the bottom of a hill. Late afternoon. Sun starting to go down. After an hour or so of inching our way out through the tactic of digging the tires out, placing snow chains under the tires for grip and then trying to move as far as possible before getting stuck again, we were found by a friendly dune buggy driver who phoned his friends. They rescued us with a winch, all the while chuckling and taking photos. I have no doubt they went home and told their friends and families about the stupid gringos who got stuck in the sand.

As we then headed out of the dunes, we had to cross the train tracks. The tracks are quite raised but usually easy to cross with a bit of care. However, in order to get out of the sand, I'd had to let the tires down to a really low pressure. One of the back tires caught on the track, squashed itself all the way to the alloy and left the car dangling on two wheels, stuck on the track. As you might imagine, being stuck on train tracks isn't the best place to be stuck. I actually thought the car had beached itself but fortunately, on closer inspection, it was just the wheel...I rushed out, pushed and a short while later we were unstuck with the car bouncing down the other side of the track and making noises a car shouldn't really make.

I'm never going back to the dunes.

Stuck car, murdered dune companion.



Yesterday, I decided that heading back to Cerro La Campana would be fun. I was right, for the most part. The last time I went, I ran up and down on my own as a form of exercise. The first time, I went with my friend Mike and we also got up and down pretty quickly. This time, I went again with Mike but also with another friend, Allie. As Allie is not very tall, we went a lot slower. This was actually quite a nice change.

Cerro La Campana at 6.30am from my house.


We saw 3 big-ish tarantulas on the path up.


Short legs got a bit tired after a few minutes stroll.


While Mike and Allie pretended to be rock stars, I maintained my English composure.



The main problem yesterday with slow hiking, however, was that it is coming into summer and the fly situation is pretty bad. The first couple of times I went to La Campana, there were no flies at all due to the chill in the air. Yesterday, from La Mina until about 10 minutes from the summit, we were attacked by tiny little Black Flies. Black Flies are bastards because they don't sting you, they actually bite you...until they draw blood...and then they all try to feast on that wound. Fortunately, they're incredibly slow so it's easy to kill them but they made a good hour of the hike quite unpleasant.

Anyway, apart from that, it was a good day out. The views from the top were spectacular towards La Cordillera but not so great towards Valpo and the Pacific. It was pretty cloudy in that direction. And when we were on our way down we actually walked into a giant mist cloud which was a great way to cool down.


At some point soon, I might get around to posting specifically about Valparaiso as that is the main point of this blog. This personal doing stuff blogging is no doubt getting boring.

Fiestas Patrias: Enjoy Safely

Today marks Chile's independence day (ish). The Fiestas Patrias are a week long excuse to drink, eat, dance and generally do lots of things related to everything Chilean. This being my fourth FP and, being English, not really having much of a vested interest in them I'm content to pretty much ignore everything and carry on my life as usual.

Like at the totally mental Carnavales Culturales held in Valparaiso between Christmas and New Year, many people seem to think that the FPs are an excuse to get drunk, rob and cause trouble. Up here in the hills it's generally ok but it can definitely get, shall we say, 'tasty' downtown. Hopefully this year it won't but...

...the Ilustre Municipalidad de Valparaiso is concerned enough to provide this handy leaflet giving you ideas as to how to stay safe. It's quite depressing that they feel the need to do this, to be honest. Oh well.



1. If you're driving, don't drink alcohol.
2. If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation.
3. Eat food and drink alcohol in licenced places.
4. Don't park your car in public places that are dark and don't have security. Remember not to leave valuable objects on view.
5. If you leave your house or apartment, make sure you securely close all doors and windows and leave somebody trustworthy in charge of your property.

El Borde Costero: A Slight Disagreement.

Not too long ago, I took a stroll down to the part of town known as Puerto Baron. There's more than a little controversy about this area of Valparaiso, caused entirely due to the mega-project, Mall Plaza Baron-a giant mall, convention, hotel and apartment centre. This project would cost some us$100 million to undertake and create something like 3000 full time jobs in the city. It would transform a slightly derelict promenade and attract people to an area of the city that doesn't attract all that many, other than those that already live here.

So far so good, right? Well, I guess so. Being a capitalist, money loving peeeg I'm all for this type of project...but only if it respects the environment in which it is being undertaken. The original plans for the mall included 60 metre high towers. This would completely destroy the natural amphitheatre like shape of the Valparaiso Bay and look completely out of place. It would also likely block the views of residents living just up and behind the potential project.

Now, this project could be a massive boon for Valparaiso. The investment would trickle down into the community and improve the city. But it's got to be done right. The group behind the project has scaled back the height of the buildings to around 20 metres max. This is probably about ok. But I don't understand why they can't just renovate the old warehouses that are already there. This has been done successfully in dozens of cities around the world...

Overall, though, I'm in favour of the project in its re-scaled form. The city needs investment, the area that the project would renovate needs the work and it would benefit a huge amount of people economically in the form of construction jobs in the short term and permanent staff in the long term.

Anyway, there's more information about the project here:

Pro-project: Port Authority
Anti-project (or, rather, anti almost everything-I agree with much of what they say but by no means all): Borde Costero Info

This is the current boardwalk. The buildings to the right would be demolished, the promenade opened up and new shiny buildings would be constructed behind and filled with glittering products of the consumer age.


A little further down from this sector is the beach heading towards Caleta Portales. It's covered in litter thrown by people (not all washed up litter). I don't understand how people can just throw their rubbish away like that. It's so selfish and disrespectful to everyone else.




You'll also find the Slowest Train in the World down this way. I can't find much useful info about it so if anyone knows anything, feel free to comment.



Walking back along Errazurriz, I noticed this house. Now the house itself isn't particularly interesting, but what is is the construction style. I kind of assumed that houses from this era (40-50s is my estimate but possibly 60s as well) would be re-enforced concrete. This is what they look like, anyway. Instead, they're built exactly the same as all the old houses up in the Cerros: timber framed with adobe blocks as insulation. I would have thought that by the 40s or 50s or later, this style of construction would have died out, at least in the cities.