Año Nuevo in Valparaiso

After a brief stop in Santiago we headed to Valparaiso just a couple of hours away on the coast. We´d managed to find a room for a few nights in a really nice B and B called La Nona, actually voted one of the top 10 hostels in SA by The Guardian (woo), the only problem was we didn´t have anywhere to stay for the 31st. No worries we thought - we´ll be out all night anyway....

Our hostel was in an area of Valpo called Cerro Alegre, a hill overlooking the rest of the town and bay, with cafes, restaurants and bars. Valpo is considered a Unesco World Heritage site and there were so many beautiful buildings and amazing outlooks. The Cerro´s are also real artist hubs and some alleys are covered in the most amazing Graffitti - you can walk around for hours quite happily snapping away.

We took a sunset Boat trip out into the bay with Rene and Carolina the owners of La Nona, and two other Australian couples we met staying there, Sean and Shona, and Sarah and Mitch. On New Years Eve afternoon the 6 of us headed up to one of the Cerro's on the far side of the bay to get the optimum view of the coast from Valpo all the way along to another town Vina del Mar and beyond for the legendary firework displays. People had been saving the best spots all day, some seemed to have even hired bouncers to sit on chairs for them, but we managed to find a small section to squeeze into right next to the railings. Then we just had a 6 hour wait until midnight.

We drank, chatted with the locals, who introduced us to the local bevvy fanchop - Fanta and Beer - which is actually surprisingly nice! The atmosphere was incredible. A group next to us had brought instruments up and were singing and dancing away, James joined in, and at the countdown to 12 all of the boats and ships in the harbour sounded their horns and the noise was deafening. When the clock struck everyone was shouting, throwing confetti and spraying cava over the crowd. Then the fireworks started. All the way along the bay for miles there were fireworks going off, they lasted for ages and the finale sounded like a hail of bombs landing and rapid gunfire.

Slightly drunk and hungry we headed down to the centre and gorged on completo hotdogs, eventually it was just me and J left and we realised we still had the rest of the night to get through! By 4am we'd exhausted our options of sitting on the pavement and drinking beer, we'd been kicked out of a bar for falling asleep, so we decided to head back up to Cerro Alegre and see what else we could do. There we found the comfy step of a Thai restaurant and dozed until 8am - interrupted frequently by stray dogs and drunks walking past. Desperate and slightly smelly we then headed for a little Cafe called La Desayunador for a huge and much needed breakfast buffet. By 10am we'd checked back into the hostal and slept for the rest of the day. It was a brilliant, if slightly long New Years.

Video to follow soon (as I find a decent internet connection)