Pablo Neruda

Yesterday we wandered aimlessly around the city of Valporaiso, Chile. Beautiful hilly town sloping up in every direction from the port at the shore of a bay. We, for no particular reason, began following guirilla advertising type arrows painted on the curbs of a winding street, directing us to ¨La Sebastina¨. We kept on for quite a while until we turned to find that we were looking across town to where our neighborhood now was tiny and lost in a sea of colorful buildings covering the hillside. We finally arrived to the treasure at the end of the winding path, to find that it was not a meuseum as we expected, but rather the house of some famous Chilean. Pablo Neruda, an eccentric nobel prize winning Chilean poet. He was exiled for a while, however revered throughout his life for his poetry. His house was a sight to be seen. This went from being a nice walk in a beautiful Chilean port town, to one of my favorite afternoons of our time in South America (which now has only hours remaining). Beautiful mosaic tile work, detailed craftsman style wood working, round windows from a ship, recycled old doors, a carousel, a bar behind which only he was permitted, stairs leading to walls, spectacular views, and much more. After some standard confusion and ideas misdirected in translation, I found that the wide plank wood floors were a variety of pine from a place in the United States called Oregon! No pictures were permitted, so you will have to see it for yourself some day, but it comes with my high recommendation.

Oh yeah, on our way out, we also noticed at the last second that there was a joint poetry and art exhibit with an artist friend of Neruda´s also named Pablo. Pablo Picasso! pretty awesome. Original Picasso pieces in conjunction with poems by this Chilean poet pimp. Clearly, I was impressed with our decision to follow the rabbit of the obscure arrows on the curb.