I spend the night in a lodge in Vina del Mar. Though Vina del Mar and Valparaiso practically form one city, its appearance is quite opposite from Valparaiso: Clean, tidy, low street crime, and new buildings neatly arranged along a checker maze.
The night abruptly ended, when construction of the building site next door recommenced early in the morning.
I took the metro to the harbour of Valparaiso. There, a movie production was filming. I blended into the crowd of bystanders, and attended it for a while before I went on to Cerro Artilleria and Naval and Maritime Museum on top of it. It is basically a collection of weapons flavoured with devotional objects of naval war heroes of Chile’s past. Remarkable is a room dedicated to Navy Admiral José Toribio Merino who was part of the Junta that rules Chile from 1974 to 1990. I then made my way to Pablo Neruda’s house, La Sebastiana, in Valparadiso taking another elevator, Espíritu Santo. This time, I had not to rely solely on proper maintenance, but I could also hope for divine help. Pablo Neruda was a Chilean diplomat, and wan the Nobel price for poetry in 1971.
