Doors of Valparaiso

There is a lot to like and a lot to ... hate? about Valparaiso, Chile.  It's got natural charm and remarkable geophysical features but we were told on maybe a dozen occasions today to be careful - that pickpockets and purse and camera snatchers were everywhere so hide your phones, hide your camera, hide your purses. We didn't have any problem but it created a creeping sense of impending disaster that spoiled the richness of the place..  Mind you some of the richness is olfactory and the source is an abundance of dogshit and human urine.  It's a fucked-over city with rich murals and graffiti too. Many of the houses are crumbling, vacant, deserted and ramshackle (good word ramshackle). My favourite subject matter (on this trip) seems to be decay and urban rot.  So here is a small gallery of some of the doors of Valparaiso.  

Valparaiso was a wealthy city once but the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 spelled its doom as the 'Pearl of the Pacific'.  Like Havana the city has seen much better days.  The sudden failure of the economy delivered a shattering blow and then repeated earthquakes (a big one in August of last year) have been the sucker punches that keep it on its knees.  It certainly is not experiencing the renaissance that we see in Santiago.

If you have had the misfortune to have seen Robert Altman's movie Popeye starring Robin Williams as a mumbling, spinach-addled cretin - one of the most unintelligible movies ever made - then you will have reasonably good idea of what Valparaiso looks like.  Altman must have used Valparaiso as the visual inspiration for Sweethaven; that sunblistered shantytown perched like a broke-legged curlew on barnacle-crusted rocks. That town was the best thing about the movie because neither Williams nor the otherwise excellent Shelley Duval could save it.

Just a reminder, you can see a larger version of the photo by clicking on it.  Later

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