Viña del Mar and Valparaiso, Chile

Last updated on 25 June 2024

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I spent 2 weeks in Viña del Mar and Valparaiso and it was amazing.

If you cast your minds back to a few weeks ago, you may recall me announcing that I was on my to Chile. Well I went, I had a great time, and now I’m back in my own bed, flicking through all the photos that I took (over 900, if anyone is interested). The reason for going (other than pure wanderlust) was that my grandfather wanted to go back and visit all his friends from the 20 years he and my grandmother spent there back in the day. So I knew it was going to be a catch-up trip for him, rather than a tourist-trip for me. Which I was 100% okay with and it was a really great time.

I thought I should give you a bit of a run down of my time away, what I got up to, the food I ate, the things I saw. If you were following me on Instagram then you may have seen my stories or my posts each day, but there was an entire week where I didn’t have any internet. *gasp* I know.

Week 1

I was surprisingly not too jet lagged, despite the 15 hour time difference. Our flight from Auckland was on time departing, but what was supposed to be a non-stop 11-hour flight to Santiago turned into a 13-hour flight via a fuel stop in Tahiti because Auckland airport was having a fuel crisis at the time. You can read all about that here, but it meant the plane coming from Sydney, Australia, didn’t have enough fuel to go all the way to Santiago without topping up somewhere. Tahiti it was. I would have added Tahiti to my list of countries that I’ve been to, except my rule is that I have to get out of the plane. Alas. It was not so.

The first day was a relaxing one around the house of the people we were staying with, and I started my book and got sunburnt within a matter of hours. The following days saw us heading down to the local beach, going searching for pelicans (not hard to do, it turns out), visiting Valparaiso (city next to Viña del Mar, where we were), and seeing a lot of people.

Week 2

The second week was the harder one. I had no WiFi, and didn’t really fancy venturing out into the city to try and find a Starbucks when I didn’t know the language very well, I didn’t have WiFi to know where the nearest free WiFi actually was, and I thought it would be better for me to hang about with my grandfather anyway. Day 2 was the hardest.

Our host did take us out and about a little bit, and we saw a beautiful park with a lagoon, and I went with her to do something food shopping, we hit up some markets and it was just a cruisey sort of time.

Our flight back was a little bit ridiculous – we nearly didn’t get our seats! – but perhaps that’s a story for another time. Let me know if you’re interested in that tale!

Overall, definitely a fantastic trip. I met a lot of incredible people who were so lovely and who all said that I have to go back and visit again one day. I hope to take them up on that offer in the future.