Shabby chic

We made breakfast in our hotel suite. Then get the bus to Valparaiso, just ten minutes along the coast from Vina. Valpo, as the locals call it, is an industrial port. Pretty grimy and run down. It is in a odd place for a port. Ok the harbour is secluded for ships, but there is only a small amount of land between the sea front and the near vertical cliffs that surround the bay. So once the port town got too big for bay area, the residents built into and on top of the cliffs. The town has 14 ascensors, combination of a lift and tram to take residents between the upper and lower districts. Despite being rundown the town is very pretty as all the houses on the cliffs are all painted different colours. We went to the café suggested in our guide book for lunch. We'd just sat down and ordered and were looking through the guide book and a man in his 30s sat down next to us and said 'nice to see the Rough Guide.' I said he could borrow it and he replied 'oh, I don't need it'. I was half way through thinking he was a prat for showing off that he could speak some Spanish and he added, 'I wrote it'. ("Yeah, right, sure you did")..."I'm Andrew Benson". A quick check inside the book and sure enough, Andrew Benson was one of the authors. At this point we were really glad that we'd bought the Rough Guide! Now this guy could just have an encyclopaedic knowledge of guide book contributors, but he did say he also wrote for the Argentina, France and Greece Rough Guides. Anyway, he was a really nice guy and we had a chat about South America and I really embarrassed Sarah by asking him to sign our guide book (see photos). After our celebrity lunch we walked round Valpo and went to the docks and got a couple more ascensors to get views of the city and then got the luxury bus back to Santiago. We treated ourselves to a fine slap up meal in Burger King. Now that's luxury!