"Amo, Valparaíso..."

Two Fridays ago, Sarah, Hannah and I were sitting on Sarah’s bed in her house on Cerro Playa Ancha, looking out over the port of Valparaíso through the bedroom window. We tore out a piece of notebook paper, and wrote across the top “Horario de Eventos Culturales de SuperDorks.” Hannah was visiting from Valdivia for the long weekend, and we wanted to make sure that she got the full panorama of what Valparaíso had to offer while she was here. Cultural weekend guide in hand, we jotted down every concert, museum, restaurant and performance (complete with doodles on the side) that we planned to take on that crazy weekend. Four days, fifty photos, and several thousand pesos later, this is where we ended up (also, if you'd like, take a look at the featured album on my photo site):

Just an hour after finishing up our list, the three of us plus Maddie sat around a little table in the corner of Color Café on Cerro Concepción, surrounded by postcards and maps and candy wrappers and pinwheels and ribbons mounted on the collage-like walls. While an old man with an eye patch served us a few rounds of amarillos, kiwi and chirimolla juice, and the best hot chocolate you’ll ever taste, a guy and a girl around my age sat a few feet away and played Chilean folk songs on the guitar. Amazing.

From there, armbands at ribbed tank tops at the ready, we headed to what we now knew to be called PANIKO ROCK FEST. (Fabulous, I know. The K? Fantastic.) This was the result of one of my less awkward Chilean friend conquests (rather than my typical, “Ummmm, hi I’m Laura I like your bag CAN I HAVE YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS?!” I actually managed to have a legitimate conversation with a kid in my chorus class about his band) and so the group of us went to see them play. The music was good, the name was better, and I scored a few friendship points with Francisco.

Saturday morning. After snagging a $4 bus ticket to Isla Negra, a town about an hour and a half away from Valparaíso, we found ourselves wandering through the house of Pablo Neruda. Oh my goodness, there is no place more wonderful. It’s shaped like a boat, so that tiny wooden doorways open up into wide, round rooms. Neruda collected the statues off the front of boats, and positioned some of them across from each other so they’d fall in love. He had a collection of colored glass and crystal, and he kept the greens and browns on the earth side of the house and the blues and sea greens on the sea side. His desk was made of a plank that washed ashore from the sea. He once bought a giant statue of a horse from a store near his childhood home, then threw a party, requiring that all guests bring presents for the horse. He could see a churning, restless Pacific Ocean from his bed. We spent several lovely hours walking up and down the beach and eating in the fancy adjoining café, but we spent almost as much time picking out posters and note cards with Neruda quotes in the gift shop. My favorite, on a poster that’s now hanging on my bedroom door: “Yo vine aquí para cantar y para que cantes conmigo” – I came here to sing, and so that you would sing with me.

Then it was off to the theater! I live just a few blocks away from the Teatro Municipal de Viña del Mar, so I always take note of the two or three pieces that are put on every weekend whenever I walk past. Saturday night was El Ballet Guadalajara – an explosion of Mexican mariachi music and colorful skirts. Sunday was Teatro Negro de Praga, a traveling black box troupe from Prague that put on an incredible performance that was half mime act, half magic show. We all decided to get decked out for this one, and as soon as we got back, my host family started chasing me around with a camera – “¡Mira! ¡Qué linda, nuestra princesa!” – because they’re adorable.

Hannah still had a few days before going back to Valdivia (a 12 hour bus ride south, yikes!), so we decided to make the most of it. Tuesday was Día de la Asunción, so we all had a day off from classes. A perfect day for a walk through Cerro Bellavista and its Museo a Cielo Abierto – “Open Sky Museum” – which is basically just a neighborhood full of houses and shops that just happen to have murals painted on the sides. I love all the corners and the colors on the hills of Valparaíso. Everything looks like a cubist painting, with the houses all elbowing each other at every angle as they hold fast to the hillsides. After a quick spin in the Ascensor Concepción, a funicular built in the late 1800s that you can ride up the hill for a quarter, we meandered down again, headed home, and said goodbye to Hannah. She handed me another poster that she had sneakily bought for me at the Neruda gift shop. Below a colorful painting of the clotheslines and staircases and rooftops of the city read the line, “Amo, Valparaíso, cuanto encierras, y cuanto irradias, novia del océano” – “I love, Valparaíso, how much you shut in and how much you give off, bride of the sea.”

Here’s the whole poem, for those who’d like to give it a shot:

Amo, Valparaíso, cuanto encierras,
y cuanto irradias, novia del océano,
hasta más lejos de tu nimbo sordo.
Amo la luz violeta con que acudes
al marinero en la noche del mar,
y entonces eres -rosa de azahares-
luminosa y desnuda, fuego y niebla.
Que nadie venga con un martillo turbio
a golpear lo que amo, a defenderte:
nadie sino mi ser por tus secretos:
nadie sino mi voz por tus abiertas
hileras de rocío, por tus escalones
en donde la maternidad salobre
del mar te besa, nadie sino mis labios
en tu corona fría de sirena,
elevada en el aire de la altura,
oceánico amor, Valparaíso,
reina de todas las costas del mundo,
verdadera central de olas y barcos,
eres en mí como la luna o como
la dirección del aire en la arboleda.
Amo tus criminales callejones,
tu luna de puñal sobre los cerros,
y entre tus plazas la marinería
revistiendo de azul la primavera.

Que se entienda, te pido, puerto mío,
que yo tengo derecho
a escribirte lo bueno y lo malvado
y soy como las lámparas amargas
cuando iluminan las botellas rotas.

The weekend ends there, but the stories don’t. I’ll be updating again soon :)