Friday 27 April

Well, frustratingly, I seem to have lost yesterday's (Thursday's) long blog! Despite saving it as I went along and then clicking on "publish" at the end it doesn't appear to have gone online. Oh well, it contained a lot of interesting stuff and three photos from the day as well. I'll move on. Today I planned to find one or two funiculars for which Valpo is famous after reading my guide book and working out how to get to them. I needed to go into the centre of town as well to buy a bus ticket for tomorrow from here to Los Vilos, up the coast a bit. Once in town I discovered that most of the funiculars are not operating due to mechanical problems. A disappointment. I wasn't prepared to walk up the steep hills just to get a view of the city since I get the best view from this apartment anyway. I've only seen one of the occupants here briefly since I arrived and it feels as though I have the place to myself. The bus operator from here to Los Vilos looks like a small local company, not like the swish Pullman coach service I used from Santiago to here. The ticket office is a small booth on the first floor of an old building in town and the ticketing agent speaks only Spanish so it was a bit of a mission explaining what I needed (the language translator app on my phone came in very handy). The ticket was issued for a bus departing Saturday at 12:30pm and I expected it might be less than 6,000 pesos so was short by about 30 pesos so I had to explain that I needed to find a bank to change some US dollars. Easier said than done! None of the banks here seem to do money exchange so after walking some distance I came across a lovely Venezuelan girl selling cosmetics from a bag on her arm who by chance could speak some English and who was more than willing to find where a money exchange was and take me there. As I'd interrupted her selling time I was more than happy to give her 5,000 pesos for her trouble. She didn't want to take it but I insisted as it saved me a lot of time and walking. She explained to me that she is qualified as an engineer, which I totally believe. I guess there just aren't any jobs for her in Venezuela. There seems to be migrants here in Chile from many of the neighbouring countries. I made my way back to the bus ticketing office where the agent had put my issued ticket aside but then she was trying to tell  me something else which I didn't understand. Finally I gave her my phone so she could type in the question - she wanted the ticket that she'd just handed me back. She then explained that the 12:30pm bus had been cancelled and I was now on the 3:20pm bus! So she wrote out a new ticket for the 3:20pm bus. Go figure! I'm just so glad that I couldn't pay for the ticket earlier and had to go away to get change or I might have been standing on the side of the road waiting for hours for the next bus (they only go every couple of hours from here to Los Vilos).  On one of my local bus trips around the city today there was free entertainment provided by a very happy chap with a guitar and a dog - I took a video clip which I'll try to post along with today's blog (and hope it doesn't go missing like yesterday's). It's moments like that that make travel in foreign countries so interesting (no-one else on the bus took any notice at all, so I guess it is not unusual). Catch up again tomorrow from Los Vilos (Saturday, here).