Four days in Valparaíso are too much for my taste. So today I escaped three times: first to the water, doing a harbor cruise; second, to Viña del Mar, the nearby beach paradise; and third, with a night bus to Mendoza.
The fare for the harbor cruise was well-invested money. I got to see sea lions enjoying the sun on a buoy:
Nice views of Valparaíso:
And a closeup view of a huge container shop being unloaded:
I was fascinated by the logistics behind this. For each and every container that the cranes pulled off the ship, an empty truck showed up just in time to pick it up and drive it away. And of course, the dimensions of the ship and the cranes were impressive as well. I've never been on such a huge ship - except in computer games... I remember one where the task was to sink one of them. Not an easy task, I can tell you ;-)
Another sight I got to see were pelicans.
How they dive into the water headfirst is really amazing to observe.
After that, Viña del Mar was just your typical tourist trap. How do you know you've entered a tourist trap? When you haven't seen a single horse carriage in the entire country, and suddenly there are tons of highly polished ones ;-)
I usually like night buses. The sleep isn't as good as in a bed, of course, but you save a lot of time, and money for one night's accommodation. This one, however, wasn't such a good idea: it involved a border crossing. So we had to get out of the bus in the middle of the night (around 5am) and queue for more than an hour to get our passports stamped. I have no idea why this took so long... but I was too tired to investigate ;-)
The fare for the harbor cruise was well-invested money. I got to see sea lions enjoying the sun on a buoy:
Nice views of Valparaíso:
And a closeup view of a huge container shop being unloaded:
I was fascinated by the logistics behind this. For each and every container that the cranes pulled off the ship, an empty truck showed up just in time to pick it up and drive it away. And of course, the dimensions of the ship and the cranes were impressive as well. I've never been on such a huge ship - except in computer games... I remember one where the task was to sink one of them. Not an easy task, I can tell you ;-)
Another sight I got to see were pelicans.
How they dive into the water headfirst is really amazing to observe.
After that, Viña del Mar was just your typical tourist trap. How do you know you've entered a tourist trap? When you haven't seen a single horse carriage in the entire country, and suddenly there are tons of highly polished ones ;-)
I usually like night buses. The sleep isn't as good as in a bed, of course, but you save a lot of time, and money for one night's accommodation. This one, however, wasn't such a good idea: it involved a border crossing. So we had to get out of the bus in the middle of the night (around 5am) and queue for more than an hour to get our passports stamped. I have no idea why this took so long... but I was too tired to investigate ;-)
