Vina and Valpo

Hey folks!
I've been slacking on my posts here sorry about that, my only excuse is that I am still sick! This is my seventh day with the Argentinian cold of death and it is still pretty unenjoyable. A word of adive, (Never let anyone sign your checks! first person to name that quote gets 1 Chilean Peso) never get sick in a foreign country, it's a bummer. In any event, it's a long weekend here for independence day and I don't have school until wednesday so I should be able to get healthy again.

After class on Friday I headed out with my Catalan buddy from the Residencia to the coast. It's about a one and a half hour bus trip to get to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, two of the more popular beach towns in Chile. We arrived in Vina which is more of the resort type community and toured around a bit. The highligh of Vina is supposed to be this giant old luxurious casino that overlooks the ocean. We went to check it out and at the door they wanted an admission fee. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like an interesting idea for a casino to charge you before you enter. We deceided that we didnt want to pay them to lose money so we just toured around the city more. That night we stayed at a "hostel" for 4 US bucks. This hostel was actually a room in this old woman's apartment, it was kind of creepy. Luckily we survived the night and the next day went to Valparaiso. Valpo used to be Chile's most important port prior to the building of the Panama Canal (A man a plan a canal Panama) but has since become extremely run down, poor, and crime filled. Aside from those three factors Valpo is a very interesting place. The city is builts over a handful of very steep hills covered in extremely colorful houses. All throughout these hills are ascensors, which are these crazy lifts that were built in the late 1800's and early 1900's to haul people up and down the hill. The majority of these ancient funiculars are still operating and wating to plummet unsuspecting tourists at rapid speeds to the ground. Surprisingly, both of our ascensors managed to transport us safely to the top and gave us pretty cool views as shown in the above picture! The next two days should be pretty cool back here in Santiago with parades and military demonstrations just a few blocks from my house to celebrate the holiday. Ciao for now!