Wednesday morning we woke up, took freezing showers, and took a coach bus the hour trip to Valparaiso, a beautiful port town on the Pacific Ocean. It was pretty easy taking the subway to the bus station and buying tickets. We decided to just show up without hostel reservations, but luckily we immediately found a big, airy low-key backpacking hostel with open dorms in the city center. This young French guy was working the desk, and when we told him where we were from, he told us he has a good friend from Oshkosh, WI who did a high school exchange in Valpo, decided to stay, and is now working at a hostel up the street. So weird. The rest of the day we just wandered around the steep steep streets of the city among the multi-colored houses and secret staircases. We had empanadas and ice cream for lunch in the commercial district down at sea level, among all the fish stalls and vegetable stands. We also explored the historic district, a UNESCO world heritage site, and saw the Plaza de Justicia. We took another funicular elevator up to a look-out site. I thought the city was absolutely charming, but some people are turned off by how dirty and run-down it is. There is graffiti everywhere, more stray dogs than you've ever seen in your life, creepy men just standing around, and the smell of fish. The houses, which from afar appear Grecian or Italian in their steep ascent up the circular hillsides around the bay, from up close are quite run down, and their inhabitants obviously poor. Valparaiso is a pretty big tourist destination, but it is low-season (winter), and we were often alone in the streets. Which leads me to the big event, which is that we got robbed at about 5 in the afternoon. We were climbing a steep road, not talking in English or anything, because it was pretty tiring. We were walking close behind a completely non-threatening looking guy about our age. When we got to the top, he paused, as if to decide which way to turn, because there was a road to the left and a staircase to the right. We also stopped momentarily, and all of a sudden he just spun around and grabbed my purse, which was on my shoulder. It was probably the most shocking thing that's ever happened to me. Hanna was too surprised to do anything, but I managed to keep a grip on the handles and started screaming at the top of my lungs and shouting "stop." Don't really know why that's the word I thought of...Anyway, we struggled for a good 7 seconds or so, but he was stronger and was pulling me down the staircase. I almost fell, and after running with him down about 10 stairs I just let go and he took off down all the stairs and around the corner at the bottom of the hill. There was no one in the immediate vicinity, but luckily a postman heard me screaming, came over, and called the police for us. I was crying and getting somewhat hysterical, and neither of us could get more than a word out in Spanish, but the guy was super nice and just waited there. Luckily our passports were in the hostel, and our cameras were in our pockets. However, both Hanna and I had our wallets (containing every dime of our money, credit and debit cards, and drivers' licenses) in the purse. I also lost other insignificant things like my nice water bottle, my little journal, Purell (ha), my camera case, etc. Anyway, finally we see two police men (or who we assumed to be police...they were wearing basically army fatigues..the police and the army in Latin America seem to be much more strongly linked) just ambling up the street. We walk down towards them, two hysterical foreigners, and they just kind of look at us, waiting for us to say something. We manage to get out something about what happened, and then they say "oh yes, that is what we were dispatched to." They then start talking on the walkie-talkie, not asking for details or anything or being comforting at all. Then they flag a taxi, not a police car mind you, and one of the police men shoves himself into the backseat with us. They want to take us to our hostel so we can get our passports, but we can't remember the weird name of the hostel at the moment, and the card/map was in my purse, so we end up telling them the wrong corner and having to walk a bit to find it with one of the policemen. All this time he is hitting on us, asking if we have boyfriends in the U.S., etc. We get our passports, then they take us in another taxi to the station to file a report. We must have been the only thing happening all day, because all the police (25 yr. old men, the majority) are crowded around watching us and being just totally unprofessional, joking around with each other. My Heart Will Go On was playing in the background and we're sitting in this little room and it was just surreal. Then they messed up the report, saying it was Hanna who had the purse, not me, even though we kept trying to clarify it. Anyway, now we have very official (although incorrect) copies of police reports in Spanish, with the official Chilean seal and everything. When we were done it was already completely dark outside, and they're like, "can you find your way home from here?". We have just been robbed, have no map, and are two foreign girls alone. Um, no, we will not find our way back. So we waited around about an extra half hour for this armored police van to come pick us up and drive us to the hostel. In another stroke of luck, the one computer at the hostel had Skype, so we were able to call our parents about having no money. We couldn't eat dinner but we met these two very interesting Dutch girls at the hostel who gave us wine and chips, and we ended up talking to them for like 3 hours. The owner had lent us this really nice map, and asked if we could be sure to return it to him because he only had a couple. It was in my purse. So we had to explain that. Also, the rest of our time in Valpo we kept seeing the same police around (they are very into mobile units..vans parked in squares and officers walking around...just not during robberies, of course), so that was awkward.
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