[ Dec.2015 ] On the next day, we went to Valparaiso from Santiago in Chile as an excursion.
Valparaiso is the second largest city.
When I read our guide book, I had an impression that it is a light-hearted colourful town on the sea, but when we arrived, it was not only cloudy and grey but people were wearing cardigans and jackets.
I could not believe it as the day before in Santiago it was so hot.
Apparently here in this season, it often happens that the clouds spread in the morning, sometimes until about 3 o’clock.
In fact, when we got our of the car, we felt rather cold.
The reason why the atmosphere was not cheerful was not only the weather, but the poverty in this city.
In the 19th century, it flourished as an important port town.
The port here was the main base in the trading between Europe and West Coast of the USA.
Chilean silver and copper exported from this port, too.
But in 1906, they had a bad earthquake which destroyed the city and on top of that, the Panama Canal was open in 1914 which made the port in Valparaiso less important.
So the city became poor rapidly.
In recent years, they have been trying to revive the city, building 4 universities here and establishing the congress here instead of Santiago in 1990 when Chile became a democratic country.
Even so, the crime and poverty are the worst in the country, so tourists had better not walk alone in the dark.
