Paradise Valley

Back on the Gringo Trail. Phew.

I'm in Valparaíso which is a place everyone seems to rate but I'm just not getting the attraction. It just seems so ugly. Sure the residential bits in the hills are all charming and colourful, but the downtown seafront bit is just a bleak, boxy port.

They like their funiculars here. They're everywhere - I reckon that there might be more in this town than in the whole of England.

They also like Pablo Neruda. Nope, I'd not heard of him either but apparently he was about the best poet of the twentieth century and he hid in a basement here for a few months when they outlawed Communism. See you've learned something.

I walked to Viña del Mar today. It's a resort that's grown out of itself and is now a sprawling beachfronted metropolis. And once again, it's pretty ugly. I'm sensing a theme amongst Chilean cities...