This daystarted of well and then got weird. Got up took my stuff to the laundry, bought an open ended ticket to Valpariso and got some breakfast all without mishap. I was finally getting the hang of this Spanish thing: I was cooking on gas.
Well the gas must have been infused with acid. I got on the bus, took my seat and took a trip that could not have been foreseen. On the bus came some ladies who announced something about Proctor and Gamble and a promotion. They then gave everyone a box of Ariel "Seven Solutions" clothes washing capsules. Normally I would have been grateful for such largess as it would have been one less item in the shopping for one queue at Tesco`s, but I didn`t need it. I tried to say no but the enthusiastic middle age lady wouldn`t hear of it, so eventually I gave in and placed the box on the adjacent chair.
Now I had seven solutions to problems I didn`t know anything about and one problem that the box couldn`t help me with. The obvious remedy was to leave the box on the chair, well no, I tried that, and the driver came shooting off the bus and gave me them back. I said I didn`t want them, he said I wasn`t leaving them on his bus.
The next obvious solution was to stick it in the bin. Well I wasn`t too keen on that idea I`m a waste not want type of person, I also would like to preserve the planet, protect the environment, reverse global warming and hug a polar bear - metaphorically speaking-and here was my chance. I would give the capsules to the first lady I walked into ( Sexist stereotyping I know, but this is a Latin American and Catholic country and when in Rome..).
Well the first lady I offered the box to looked at me like I`d asked her to fellate me, what did I say wrong? I ran over what I`d said. Mmm, there was a chance I`d asked her to wash me with this detergent, maybe I was being to optomistic about my Spanish, I dont think I asked her to do anything strange. I tried again with another lady. Result, after asking me If I washed, I told her that I was a tourist, I`d been given this and I didn`t need it. With a quick gracias she was away box in hand. And what did she do once she was a reasonable distance away? She stuck it in the bin.
The motto of this saga is to avoid embarrassment fuck the environment and waste everything.
As for Valpiriso, its exactly like it is in the guide books, set on a bay with a backdrop of steep hill it also has a beach resort Viña del Mars next to it. A bit lie Malaga. Like Malaga it is also a working port and naval base. Consequently its full of seafood restaurants, markets and sailors of a merchant and military bent, mean looking bastards who look like they would smash your teeth in if you as much as said hello to them ( There`s a pun and a joke in there folks). One difference from Malaga is the hills are a lot steeper and the buildings cling to them like gulls to a cliff side. How they deal with the earthquakes they get around here? It was using the funiculars, that save pedestrians having to negotiate the punishing gradients, that provided the answer: they dont, the buildings often fall down, often onto the buildins below them, which is not nice.
I did not notice any micro breweries here, a first on this trip.
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