The City of Artists

7th - 10th April

The days on Chiloé had passed faster than expected and before we knew it, we were in the next city.

Puerto Varas.

Why exactly the small town with a population of 40,000, located directly on Lake Llanquihue?

Honestly? No idea.
Originally, Frutillar was planned, but since the bus times didn't fit well, it became Puerto Varas.

Here we spent a few nice relaxing days, including my birthday.
In fact, I don't think I've ever used 18 or even 19 hours of my birthday before.

Besides my birthday, we happened to come across a car exhibition for vintage cars. It's pretty interesting to see which cars used to fill the streets of America or Europe a few decades ago.

But that's all about Puerto Varas, because I can't tell you everything here.

As my teachers used to tell me in school:
Stick to the essentials.

Maybe one of my former teachers will read this and remember. Best regards!

Well, now we were standing at the bus station in Puerto Montt, comparing prices and finally came to the conclusion that we wanted to drive straight to Valparaiso overnight.
We skipped the Indian market in Villarrica, where I actually wanted to get an alpaca jacket, because we were in the off-season and the weather didn't look so good.

Hours later (first at the bus station, then 12 hours on the bus), we stood at the bus terminal in the middle of the million-strong capital of Chile;

Santiago de Chile.

Hilmar, Conny, and several others had told me about the smog. It hung around the city like a huge ring. Gray and gloomy. Impossible to see the mountains.

But why is that?

One might think it's because of a large industrial landscape, but that's not the case.
Santiago has about 7 million inhabitants, of which about 400,000 own a car.

400,000 cars drive on the streets of Santiago every day. The exhaust fumes that are produced would normally be distributed by wind currents.
But that's not possible here in Santiago, because to the east are the Andes and to the west is the Costanera (a mountain range).

Both mountain ranges prevent the smog from being distributed, so everything concentrates in the capital of Chile.

Enough of that. I thought: In a city like this, with smog, so many people, you don't want to stay longer than necessary.

How wrong I would be...

After a 2-hour bus ride and a short search, we stood in a large living room.

Our new home for the next few days.

As luck would have it, there was also an acquaintance in Valparaiso.
Carlos, another friend of Conny and Hilmar, had been here for some time.

So why not go on a city tour.
Said and done. It started the next day.

Through the streets of Valparaiso, sometimes a church or a large square on the side.
With the beautiful weather, the street artists and vendors also came out and advertised their art.

I had been looking for another opportunity to learn Spanish for some time.
So by chance, I found the book 'Perfume' at a street vendor's. Of course, in Spanish 😉

Crazy to want to read such literature, even though my Spanish is not even remotely sufficient for it.

But why not. 🤷♂️

Our actual destination was Cerro Alegre.
We kept winding up the mountain.

The special thing about this place was not only the colorful houses, which were terraced and formed the city, but also the graffiti.

Hundreds, maybe even thousands of graffiti of all kinds. However, I noticed a disturbingly high number of political artworks...

I began to love this place. Everywhere you could find something artistic, something colorful.
Wherever you looked, a graffiti was artfully incorporated into the flower-decorated street. The many people armed with drawing boards were also worth a moment of attention.

A bit more impressive, however, were the small art galleries. You could find them everywhere.

Some bigger and some a bit smaller.

The artworks exhibited there and for sale were created by unknown artists.
In my opinion, they were a thousand times better than the pieces in an art museum.

Often, it was hardly possible to actually identify a picture as a picture. The resemblance to a photograph was simply too great.

You could get lost in this ubiquitous art, and before we knew it, the day was already over...