Ahhhhhhhh! Valparaiso! So named because it is the Valley of Paradise! For some unknown reason I had it in my head that Valparaiso was a small village. I’ve no idea why. It’s actually the third largest city in Chile with a population of 285000! So it was a bit of a surprise to me. But a very nice one! No worry, we’ve had a full-on wonderful day of walking in the baking heat, and generally exploring all the tiny alley ways and hugely steep streets. We started by walking 4 miles along the sea front to the fish market where we saw amazing things! Best of all were the laziest sea lions in the world who’d given up on the natural task of catching their daily fish, in favour of just hanging around aimlessly until the fisherman threw their scraps at them! And really, who could blame them???!!! Today was a lot of walking. So, tired and hungry we retreated to the hostel about half 6 ish, and armed ourselves with pizza and huge bottles of beer. We then joined Randall and Marie, a New Zealand couple aged 50, who’d done the same as us in the way of selling their house and buggering off travelling, and were having the same great time that we were! A brilliant night with lovely people!! We are so lucky! Only 3 days left in South America. Don’t want to leave. I’m enjoying the adventure of the different culture and the language problems. This is definitely the place for the future….. (Sorry for boring blog but I’m knackered…..)

Sunrise

Something else for Charlotte to worry about….

The Chilean Navy, brought in by West Yorkshire Police to keep an eye on us…..

For some reason this reminded me of the crew of 37……

…… and here’s a photo I recently took of the crew of 47

My lunchtime beer! How very civilised!!!

I had a tie that looked like this in the early eighties…..

Dusk from our bedroom. Very chilled.