valparaiso is the place most reminiscent of san francisco thus far. well, maybe it’s not so much that it reminds me of san francisco, but of any ‘nice’ mid-size western city (san francisco, boston, prague, etc.). the city seems to get most of it’s money from the port, service and tourism industries. coming in a few blocks from the water, you reach a pretty big hill…and most of the city is built on this slope. surprisingly houses tend to survive the earthquakes and landslides. i say ‘surprising’, because quite a few houses are ~100 years old and, from my room, many look like they would have trouble standing on flat ground.

i was originally planning on staying at a hostel in a cool house from 1925. i found the place, and everything seemed fine. but, when i drove my car to the place (i was parked about half a mile away), i got lost…and ended up at another hostel. i figured it wouldn’t hurt to check it out….and it ended up being cheaper and without the smell of cigarettes. the place (with a shared bathroom) costs 6,000 pesos. which is about $12, and brings me to today’s rant: it’s nice when a foreign currency is equivalent to a little more than the dollar…but not too much more. like in peru, 3 nuevos soles equals 1 dollar…so when you get something for 30, it ends up being $10 and you feel like you’re getting a bargain. in chile, though, you drop the zero’s (divide by 1000) and multiply by two….so my room for 6k pesos suddenly becomes $12…which is still cheap, but not a crazy bargain like $6 would be.

tomorrow i’ll get to walk around and check out the museums, etc. i enjoy being in a place where the nice-looking restaurants are not catered specifically to the tourists. it’s a bit of a shock, though, to be around so many cigarettes. i actually hadn’t really noticed cigarettes this whole trip…until chile.