The unconventional Chilean city Valparaiso has no big sights and no pretensions, but it does have what counts: plenty of character.
The unconventional Chilean city Valparaiso has no big sights and no pretensions, but it does have what counts: plenty of character.
By Brian Johnston
January 22, 2025 — 4.00am
As I sail into Valparaiso on Viking Jupiter, this working port jerks with the movement of cranes, shipping containers and flocks of rapacious seagulls lured towards the fishing fleet. Buildings tumble down hillsides. Streets rattle with the honk of horns and bark of dogs.
We disembark into a rundown, crowded waterfront district. Like any working-class port city, Valparaiso is raucous and characterful, smelling of hot metal and traffic fumes and rotting drains. Small shops sell tyres, wholesale toilet rolls and boxes of pastries.
But Valparaiso is also a city like no other. It feels fierce and chaotic. For those who find it intimidating, our morning complimentary shore excursion is a good introduction. Our guide, Ervands, tell us we must embrace Valparaiso’s madness to enjoy it.
“Everything is chaotic, there’s no city planning at all. It’s an entanglement,” Ervands says. To him, this is a recommendation, and he isn’t wrong. Valparaiso’s charm is soon apparent beneath its rust and dishevelment.
The city developed as a trade port in the late 19th century. It was avant-garde and wealthy, claiming a swag of Chilean firsts: a railway line, newspaper, stock exchange, telegraph station. Grand mansions in eclectic immigrant styles mushroomed on its hillsides.
The opening of the Panama Canal soon put Valparaiso out of serious business, and inland Santiago took over as Chile’s premier city. Lately, however, the smaller city has had an influx of creatives lured by low rents. Valparaiso has become a free-spirited, free-thinking city of artists and eccentrics.
Like many of Viking Cruises’ guides, Ervands is adept at providing the basic facts and covering landmark buildings while also painting a picture of this city’s character.
On the flat seafront, grand government and church buildings sit amid the soft furnishings of street markets and parks. Plaza Sotomayor is flamboyant with naval headquarters and heroic statues. But the real fun, says Ervands, is up above.
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Nobody seems to agree on how many hills – 40, 43, 45 – the city clings to. Hillside neighbourhoods aren’t as confrontational as the waterfront, but just as lacking in urban planning.
Anything goes when it comes to buildings constructed from plaster, wood and corrugated iron. Yellow clashes with red. Churches have pale blue walls and green roofs. Telegraph wires are strung along streets like the lines of a music score.
I can play real-life Snakes and Ladders exploring haphazard alleyways and staircases. Plunging streets give unexpected views to the Pacific Ocean, and cough me up in tiny plazas. Flights of painted steps are shortcuts to hillside neighbourhoods.
I’m always coming across another interesting boutique or cafe swathed in bougainvillea. Unexpected, pocket-sized terraces hidden behind cafes and bars allow me to gaze at another layer of streets below against the glittering ocean.
Many hillside promenades have thrilling views. Among the best are Paseo 21 de Mayo and Paseo Atkinson. So do Valparaiso’s version of cable-car trams, which are more vertical and more charming than San Francisco’s in their creaking antiquity, and still used by locals to commute up and down.
Even better than the views, though, is the street art in a dizzying kaleidoscope of colour. Since city authorities decided to embrace graffiti rather than rail against it, it has rightly become Valparaiso’s defining attraction.
Samurai warriors peer from door panels. Walls swirl with hibiscus patterns. At one corner, a green-haired woman in a red dress drags a blue dog on a lead. At another, a pink lady with cat’s ears and whiskers crouches. Her dress is covered in yellow butterflies.
Forget dull tourist sights. Every city should have this kind of character. I start my visit to Valparaiso with a nervous frown, but leave with a smile.
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The details
Cruise
Viking Cruises’ 18-day South America & Chilean Fjords itinerary between Buenos Aires and Valparaiso/Santiago (or the reverse) visits Argentina, Uruguay, Falkland Islands and Chile, with six departures between November and February 2025. From $10,795 a person including accommodation, all meals and meal-time drinks, Wi-Fi, gratuities and a complimentary shore excursion in each port, including a half-day “Valparaiso & Museums” excursion. See vikingcruises.com.au
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The writer was a guest of Viking Cruises.
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Brian Johnston seemed destined to become a travel writer: he is an Irishman born in Nigeria and raised in Switzerland, who has lived in Britain and China and now calls Australia home.
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