UNESCO Hillside Cerros with Funicular Ascensores, South America's Best Street Art, Pablo Neruda's La Sebastiana & Casablanca Valley Wine
📍 Valparaiso, Chile📅 3-day itinerary
The UNESCO World Heritage port city ("Jewel of the Pacific" from 1820-1914, the most important port on the Pacific until the Panama Canal opened) where 42 hillside cerros are covered in corrugated iron houses painted every colour of the spectrum, connected to the lower city by 1880s-1910s cable funicular elevators (ascensores), covered in South America's finest commissioned street murals, and where Pablo Neruda wrote his "Odes to Valparaíso" ("the most beautiful port city in Chile and the whole world") in La Sebastiana — the house with the carousel horse and the ship figureheads and the view of the Pacific.
The 1883 Ascensor Concepción (the Oldest Funicular in Valparaíso) That Rises 69 Metres Through the UNESCO Heritage Cerro to the Victorian Houses Where British Merchants Built Corrugated Iron Homes from Ship Ballast Sheets in the 1880s — and La Sebastiana Where Neruda Kept a Parisian Carousel Horse and Signed His Chile Books
The Casablanca Valley 25 km East of Valparaíso Where the Humboldt Current Cold Creates the Largest Day-Night Temperature Swing in Chilean Wine Country — and Viña del Mar Immediately North Where the Manicured Resort City Makes the Sharpest Urban Contrast in South America with the Anarchic Port City Next Door
The Paseo 21 de Mayo on Cerro Artillería (the Most Panoramic Viewpoint in Valparaíso, Looking Over the Working Port — the Container Terminal That Still Handles More Chilean Copper Exports Than Any Other Port — the Pacific Horizon, and the Cerros in All Their Colours) at Sunset Over the Ocean