Well, today is our last day in Viña, so we should make the most of it. How? By leaving Concon quickly and heading towards Viña. We leave, take the bus (without going up the dune), and head towards Viña. We quickly arrive to the shopping centre where we get off and start walking.
Since we know we don’t have much time left, we obviously want to walk along a nice walkway. So where do we go? Towards the Pacific Ocean. Only 10 minutes from the mall you are on a pedestrian walkway that has access to this: el Muelle Vergara (the Vergara Pier).
It’s a calm place to walk around, and it is obviously no longer used, haha. All along the edges it has platforms for fishing. The fish they were pulling out weren’t too big, but there were A LOT of people trying to get “the big one”. While we were here we just filmed a bit and enjoyed the view out into the Pacific and to the beaches on either side of the pier.
But, our time is actually limited, so we can’t just stay here forever. We continue walking. From here you can either walk across the above beach, or walk around the buildings to continue on the pedestrian pathway. We chose behind the buildings. We then make it to Peru Avenue, another very beautiful street in Viña where there are many small vendors as you walk along the ocean. As you can see below, you can still see el Muelle Vergara from this street… but we soon turn around and start walking along this avenue. Of course, we decide to film it so we don’t have many pictures.
You always know when my travel partner films anything because the only thing that the pictures show are the start (above) and the end (below) of a walkway, haha. Below you can see where the pedestrian walkway continues along La Marina Avenue.
The large building that can be seen towards the left is the Cap Ducal, a hotel/restaurant that sits just above the ocean. A little further on is the Wulff Castle, a museum that was undergoing maintenance, so it was not open while we were visiting. But, that’s as close as we got to that side of the walkway. Instead we turned towards the left and walked up along the Estero Viña del Mar. This looks like a large river, but it is actually a mixture of salt and freshwater at this point, and further up the “river” decreases its flow a lot. But that’s fine. At this end it looks like a really big river, haha.
But then we cross that bridge that you can see in the above picture and we’re back in downtown Viña. We quickly walk through the city to see if we want to buy anything before leaving for good, but we can always make time to take pictures of public art!
Most of the above cartoons should be easily recognizable to most of our dear readers, but there are some special ones. In the first picture (upper left) we see a number of Pokemon. In the second picture (upper right) we see some Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters. BUT, you can also see a young girl named Mafalda, who is from an Argentinian cartoon character that is quite famous throughout Latin America. You can also see a bird named Condorito (literally means “little condor”) that is a very famous Chilean cartoon. Might as well pass on a bit of new cartoon characters to you, our dear reader. In the third picture (lower left) we see characters from Asterix and Obelix. Finally in the fourth picture (lower right) we just saw a cool looking chickadee. Not a bad collection of art.
Then we continue on further, walk all of Avenida Valparaiso (the main street through downtown Viña) and we get a few things here and there. Eventually we make it back to Plaza Vergara where our time in Viña actually started four days ago. You can see some nice fountains in the background, but you can’t see all of the people that are around enjoying the park.
However, the real reason we took this picture is because of the small monument/plaque that is just behind my shoulder. It is a small plaque to the Chilean Commission of Human Rights – Viña del Mar and it says “To those that fight to defend the human rights”. But what we find even more interesting are the years on these plaques. The main plaque was placed in 1997, which makes sense. It could not be placed during the dictatorship. BUT!! The symbol for the human rights commission says 1978, which to us means that it was founded five years after the military coup. They must have done a very important job during the dictatorship and it can’t have been easy to do that work with all of the documented human rights violations that occurred during that time (1973-1990).
We continue walking and start going back towards the shopping mall to catch the bus back towards Concon. But first we come across the Feria Internacional de Artesanias (International Crafts Fair). We might as well go in and check it out! As soon as we enter see some nice artwork depicting the Mapuche.
And after that it is time to walk all of the aisles and take a look around. There are people from all over Latin America, with many different indigenous groups from varying countries represented. And there are all kinds of things that can be bought here.
We actually enjoy our time here strolling through the aisles. We almost, almost, forgot that we are really in a crunch time and need to leave Viña, haha. But then we quickly keep walking and make it back to the mall. Here we have to quickly jump on a bus and head back to Concon as quickly as we can. There we grab our stuff and pretty much jump right into a car that will take us back towards Viña. Once we get close to the beach/mall we jump out and switch to a bus that will get us the rest of the way. We just can’t sit still… haha. In no time at all we are back at the Viña del Mar bus terminal.
We go inside, get our tickets to Santiago, and pretty much immediately board the bus and get comfortable. It’s a quick ride back to Santiago and we are there in about two hours. Not bad at all.
As we approach the bus station in Santiago we get a glimpse at a monument just a little bit further than where the bus is entering the bus station. You may be able to see those pillars off in the distance. This is the Palestine Walkway. We had to include it since our plan had been to visit Palestine after our time in Saudi Arabia, but we weren’t able to…
But, we were told that the neighbourhood isn’t necessarily the best to be walking around in, especially in the evening… so this is as close as we got to the monument. We do however know that the Palestinian Authority gave this as a gift to Chile to both celebrate their 200th anniversary since the start of the independence process and to commemorate all the Chileans of Palestinian descent. This makes even more sense when you learn that Chile is supposed to be the country with the most people of Palestinian descent outside of the Middle East. One final note, each of the pillars that you see off in the distance is adorned with the name of a Palestinian city. We really wish people didn’t strictly forbid us from walking around the bus station… or else we would have definitely gone to take a picture closer to these monuments!!
But alas… we cannot. So instead we just arrive to the Santiago bus station and take a picture that you may all be getting too familiar with, the inside of the Santiago bus terminal, haha. But from here we take an Uber to our accommodations and lay down for a well deserved night of sleep. Goodnight from Santiago!
