New Years in Valparaiso

Valparaiso's firework display for New Years is world renowned. Every year there are several displays that run up the coast for thirty or forty kilometers from Valparaiso to Concon, the community we live in. Instead of staying home, we joined our friends Norm, Charlene and Susana to view the fireworks on the rooftop of the Shuttleworth's apartment on Cerro Placeres.

This is the Esmeralda, lit up for the night. Fifteen naval cadets are chosen each year to train on her as they sail around the world. The ship is a replica of the one on which Los Heroes fought and died in the Battle of Iquique against Peru during the War of the Pacific (against both Peru and Bolivia) in 1879.

Resentments still exist as Chile, with the aid of Great Britian, after having lost the battle won the war, and annexed a huge swath of coastline that belonged to the other two countries, taking away Bolivia's access to a seaport. At that time, nitrate was being exported from huge guano deposits in this area. Chile got the coast and the revenue from the nitrate. Chile has offered Bolivia rail access to use its ports, but Bolivia has declined. I have a norteamericana friend who moved to Bolivia with her husband about the same time we came here. I asked if they would ever consider Chile. She said no, her husband's family would never forgive them.











On the roof we had plenty of champagne (as demonstrated above by Susana) which unfortunately mixed with the sewage smells wafting off the ventilation system. If we were to be here next year, Susana tells us the place to be is in the streets where people dance all night long. Still, I enjoy smaller settings and was satisfied with the view we had of the whole bay and coastline, the feast we shared, and the way we finished our evening with quiet conversation on their balcony listening to the sounds of the city below. Norm and Charlene will be returning to Canada in two weeks; both Bill and I will miss sharing our adventures and misadventures as extranjeros here. We've made friends for life.



Charlene and me







Susana, Bill and I walked down Cerro Placeres, through the dusty plaza and the streets blowing our New Years horns, which elicited a spicy comment to my husband from an elderly senora sitting on her front steps . . . much of Chilean humor has a sexual base. We past parties set on other rooftops lit with fairy lights and vibrating with loud music. The ever present dogs wandered by as though they had their own fiestas to find. We came down to where scores of people waited on the cement strip to catch buses to the north.

It was four in the morning and thousands of cars were streaming by, along with bus after bus full to capacity. We sat on the curb, amazed at the number of people . . . a million or two? . . . who had to have been in the city. We finally squished onto a 602 which spent at least another hour going the distance it usually takes 10 minutes to cover, the conductor slamming on the brakes now and again as traffic ground to a stop. We finally got seats. A boy of perhaps 11 or 12, who had no ears, just nubs of earlobs, sat shotgun. I assumed he was the son of the conductor from his gentle glances as he checked on the boy, who finally used his jacket as a pillow and fell asleep.

We arrived in Concon with most of the bus still full; the man next to Susana sleeping so soundly she worried he would miss his stop. But he didn't wake up even when she shook him. We hopped off at our stop and walked down our street, reaching our house just as the night sky was bleaching the morning haze to gray.



We woke up around ten, took a walk, and found these revelers at the end of our street. Even the dog was sleeping it off.