The lovely beach town we made our home for a week,Vina Del Mar, is part of the Valparaiso region, so one of the days we ventured into the larger city to tge south that we could see from our apartment. While it took some digging to find a tour company that would fit our needs, once we did find something - the tour company and the unique city did not disappoint!
Valparaiso is so colorful and creative! It was a delight to walk around this town all day – yes, I said walk! It was really hard to find a family tour of Valparaiso. The big tour companies in the area wanted to do day tours from Santiago and often included Vina Del Mar – which we did not need to include as we were exploring it on our own. One of the days we were walking around Vina, we happened upon the tourism office (hidden in a residential neighborhood) – I was thrilled, but left pretty empty handed – they did give me a copy of info for 4 local tour companies – most didn’t even have websites and I didn’t have any luck with phone calls.
However, the list did give me some different keywords to use in my google search – and one last effort before we just ventured out on our own (which I was hesitant to do because a family we had met one evening warned against visiting that town – they said too many pickpockets) – and I found Paratour https://www.patatourchile.com/! Booking the tour was a bit confusing, but finally the morning of we took off in 2 Ubers down the coast about 20-30 minutes. My car was the first to arrive at the meeting spot right on the port, and the kids were thrilled to run around and climb on old cannons while I figured out if we actually had a guide. After some locals tried to entice me to go out on their fishing boat, a young American couple walked over to me and asked if I was here to meet Paratour as well – yes! (it must have been my stellar Spanish that declined the fishing boat invitation that clued them in) So, we had a group – now we needed a guide….Sebastian arrived shortly after and the tour was off and walking (after we paid the owner of Paratour in cash)…
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Valparaiso is a maze of hills, so it was great to have Sebastian to guide us through the twists and turns. We started on the coast with a metro ride to the seafood market (this was great because we got a taste of the public transit metro without having to figure it out ourselves – of course, the kids love riding on the metro!) While the kids reported the seafood market was quite stinky, it was also quite fascinating. The oldest remarked that she saw kids around her age doing some of the grunt work in the different areas of the market – this led us to a discussion about pitching in and doing the grunt work as a means to learn the tricks of the trade and move up into more skilled positions later. The star attractions at the market were the sea lions – they lounged around on the rocks until they heard the shopping cart rolling down the pier – this meant the seafood scraps would be dumped into the ocean. We witnessed a feeding frenzy as the sea lions and seagulls devoured the scraps! Before we moved on, Jason and I taste tested a couple varieties of ceviche – delicious!
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The tour continued with more walking mixed with different types of public transit, such as trolleys, buses, and funiculars! Of course there are funiculars in Valparaiso – the hills are perfect for these vertical trolleys. I think Sebastian said there used to be 22 funiculars, but maybe 7 are functioning today – some closed during Covid and just haven’t reopened due to needed repairs. We ended up testing out 2 of the funiculars, much to the excitement of the boys! Everyone appreciated the lift up the hill – it sure made walking the colorful streets back down so much more enjoyable. At the top of one of the funiculars, we stopped for lunch at a cute restaurant called Circular with fantastic views and equally fantastic seafood dishes! We enjoyed lively conversation with Sebastian and the other couple on the tour, newlyweds, and our youngest found another Christmas tree to observe and enjoy.
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I’m not even sure how to explain the art scene in Valparaiso – the photos will give you a taste of it though! After lunch, we continued to twist and turn through neighborhoods and climbed a little to feast our eyes on mural after mural – some neighborhoods are absolutely covered with artwork! We also took in some amazing views of the Pacific and could even look north to spot the landmarks we were familiar with in Vina. Sebastian brilliantly narrated as we meandered through the streets – he pointed out different styles used by different artists, some of whom were his friends! Jason and I were happy to hear some of the history of the region since we weren't able to visit many of the museums that would be on our itinerary without kids in tow.
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The kids squealed with excitement when we turned a corner in a rainbow alley and found a slide built into the hill – they climbed the steps and slid down for quite some time (and those who did not love the seafood at lunch, got a slice of yummy pizza at the bottom of the slide).
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It was such a fun day exploring Valparaiso – everyone appreciated the street art, and we even met some of the artists of the murals we passed as they set up booths to sell some of their art for tourists. The array of styles and topics covered in the street art ranged from modern, classical, abstract, and historical, geographical, zoological, political, and just fun! Every mural has its own story – browse the collages and explore some of these stories – the variety textures of the canvas and the materials used (even sharpie) to create each piece truly bring these stories to life! By the end of the day everyone had 15,000-20,000 steps, but the fantastic tour – invoking all senses - of Valparaiso was well worth the sore feet at the end of the day.
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