December 13, 2017
We had a leisurely breakfast and wrote up
yesterday’s blog before setting out for the day. The sun broke through the overcast sky after
9 am when the temperature was 14 and a wind of about 20 km/hr. We walked over
to Playa Ancha street for a different route over to Artilleria street to get to
Museo Naval y Marítimo (Naval and Military
Museum) or take the 21 de Mayo walkway. (It is the one we take that has 193
stairs and some ramps for its passage way.)
There were groups of school children lined up to enter the museum. The museum is located at the top of the
Artileria Ascensor, which at the other end is down in Plaza Aduana (about 8
blocks from Plaza Sotomayor). The
viewpoint here gives a great view of the horseshoe shaped bay from Valparaíso to Viña del Mar and north
to the town of Con Con. You can see the
cranes working in the container port and the ships, naval vessels and boats
anchored in the harbor.
The website for the museum is:
We spent 2.5 hours exploring the museum. It
has exhibition rooms on two floors that have lots of room to move about. Some of the rooms have a box by the door with
a 2-page explanation in a few English paragraphs about the theme of the
room. Some paintings and artifacts also
have English and braille descriptions. The building has an outdoor interior
courtyard with a grass lawn and plants forming an anchor. We could browse the Spanish descriptions and
figure out a bit of the information and enjoyed the challenge.
As you entered the second room there were
three stained glass windows each featuring one of the three central heroes Chilean navy history. In the
middle is Arturo Prat Chacón who died in the Sea Battle of Iquique (21 May
1879) as he boarded Peruvian ship, Esmeralda. On the right side is Bernardo O'Higgins,
who governed Chile from 1817 to 1823 and is credited with forming the Chilean
Navy; and on the left side is Cochrane who commanded the navy from 1818 to
1823. Also in the room are two other stained glass windows which show the maps of the world in the 17th
century. Below them is a granite boulder etched with “NAVIGAE NECESSE EST”
which means to navigate is necessary.
Bernardo O'Higgins
created the navy because the Spanish Viceroy of Peru, which included Bolivia,
had blockaded Chile. The 1808 defeat of Spain by the French army led by Napoléon
Bonaparte in Europe had an influence in South America, since Spain no longer
could supply its colonies. By 1817 O’Higgins,
the illegitimate son of a former Viceroy of Peru, had formally formed the first
unit of the Chilean navy.
Thomas
Alexander Cochrane had been dismissed from the British navy and within two
years had joined the Chilean navy and commanded the capture of Valdivia, with its
seven fortifications, from the Spanish.
He later fought with the Brazil and Greece for their independence
movements and returned years later to rejoin the British navy. On August 11,
1819, he was commander of the fleet and created the Marine Corps Battalion
under the command of Lieutenant Commander James Charles.
Another
figure in the Chilean independence movement was Manuel Blanco Encalada,
who in 1826 was Chile’s first president, for two months.
Other interesting events were the 1837 to
1839 war between the Peru - Bolivian Confederacy and Chile. Chile sometimes had assistance from
Argentina.
On September 21, 1843, the Chilean
government took possession of the Strait of Magellan.
In another war with Spain in 1865-66, the city
of Valparaíso was bombarded by Spanish warships firing their cannons into the
port city.
On October
8, 1879 during the battle of Anagamos, Chile defeated the Peruvian navy and
from then on had the marine dominance of South America’s west coast. This was part of the Battle of the Pacific
between the Peru - Bolivian Confederacy and Chile. Chile won and both Peru and Bolivia were
forced to cede land to Chile, which is now part of northern Chile, including
Arica, where we visited last week on the cruise. Bolivia lost its access to the
sea and became a landlocked country. Part of the cause of the war was the
nitrate mining in Bolivia and Chile and arguments as to who had control of a
disputed border.
In the courtyard is the actual capsule that
was used to rescue the 33 Chilean miners who trapped underground between August
5, 2010 and October 12, 2010.
There was a mural of the kinds of local
boats used by Chileans in the past 2,000 years.
There was a room of famous navy captains
including Luis Pardo, who rescued Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic
Expedition members from Elephant Island in August 1916 and took them to Punta
Arenas, Chile. Their ship, Endurance,
had been trapped in Weddell Sea ice and sank in October 1915. The crew made their way to Elephant Island
and awaited help.
Admiral Luis Gomez, after the disastrous
1906 Valparaíso earthquake applied martial law to stop looting and had the
drinking water supply restored within 15 days. [Puerto Rico would have liked
someone like that after their 2017 hurricane.]
In another room, there was a tribute to the
important explorers of South America including George Vancouver, who had sailed
with Captain James Cook. Vancouver spent 8 months in Chile gathering scientific
data. There was also a poster regarding
the A.L.C.H. which was founded in St. Malo, France, by French merchant ship
captains who had crossed the Strait of Magellan. Their symbol is the albatross that sails high
in the air above Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. The organization
became international in the last 1940s. The translation of the name is “Brotherhood
of the Captains of the Cape Horn”. There are three categories of persons
crossing by the Horn. The third category is called “Cape Pigeon” for the crew
or passengers in a sailing vessel passing Cape Horn with no auxiliary engines. A cruise ship passenger would not qualify.
The 400th anniversary of the
discovery of Cape Horn, by the Dutch ship, Eendracht, was on January 29, 2016. Cape
Horn is located on the small southern Chilean Island of Hornos Island, the most
southern island of the Tierra Del Fuego region.
The Chilean claim to the Pacific Ocean off
its western and southern coasts is called the Presential Sea. It covers the triangle
shaped expanse of ocean between South America, Chile’s claim of part of
Antarctica and Easter Island.
There is a room with a large-scale model of
a sailing “pirate” ship, that is a favourite of children. Here there are the
names of the pirates that irritated the Spanish. Their names are famous to British history: Francis
Drake, Captain Willian Kidd and Henry Morgan among them. They were also active plundering in the
Caribbean Sea.
Another room had model sailing ships of Chilean
historical importance. A Canadian sailing
ship, William D. Lawrence, which was built in a Canadian shipyard either in
Québec, New Brunswich or Nova Scotia sailed around Cape Horn in 1874 in a good length
of time. And the final room had a large model of the Chilean ship “Almirante
Latorre” which was built in England in 1913-1915 but was commandeered for World
War I by the British Royal Navy and named “Canada”. Chile bought it back in 1920 and it served
until 1958.
We stopped for a coffee after viewing the
first floor and spent over 2.5 hours immersed in the Chilean naval history. Our step count was minimal at 2,791.
The
stairway down to the flats was nearby and we needed to get supplies for
breakfast. Once down below, we had planned to shop at the Santa Isabella grocery
store on San Martin street. However, as
we started on Bustamante street, which we have walked at least each day, we
talked to a local man who asked where we were from, and he advised not to go to
Santa Isabella grocery store as it was too rough and there could be pickpockets.
(We only carry about $10 cash and the rest in hidden in our money belts under
our clothes.) So, we turned back to Carampangue street and walked along
Errazuriz street, seven blocks to the train terminal Unimarc grocery store. To buy produce you need to weigh the item and
key in the code and a label is created that you stick on the bag containing the
fruit or vegetables. We bought two bananas (240 pesos) and two small vanilla
yogurts (410 pesos) for tomorrow’s breakfast and another 700 ml bottle of Cola
de Mono (3050 pesos). Then walked back up the stairs and went to Playa Ancha street
and stopped at a bakery where we bought two muffins (800 pesos). Tomorrow’s
breakfast cost a grand total of 1,450 pesos or $2.90 for two people! Steps 8,827
When we returned to the apartment we had
lunch – a cereal bar and a glass of Cola de Mono each. Then it was time to make the trek back to
Twin Magic Laundry. We took a different
route this time, which included walking down Bustamante Street (despite the earlier
warning) to the north side of Plaza Sotomayor then turning down Sotomayor to
the El Peral stairway and up into the Alegre barrio. The view of the harbor in
the bright sunshine was fabulous, after two days of marine layer cloud and cool
drizzle. You could even see the Andes Mountains in the far distance. Behind the
Armada de Chile building on Plaza Sotomayor, we noticed a building in the same
colours as the Armada building which looked like a piece of blue Wedgewood
china. At the top of El Peral passage was a lovely hotel that used to be the
British Crompton Mansion. Mr. Crompton had the house built between 1887 and
1897 and it became a hotel in 2013. Then
we passed the Roman Catholic church that we had only seen its twin towers on
our walking tour. As we were within a couple of minutes of our destination on
Galos street we head Latin music that sounded like it was from a live
band. Assembled on Almte Montt were
about 20 young people with drums and trumpets and dancers getting ready to amble
down Alegre hill to Concepcíon hill as we collected our nicely washed, dried
and folded laundry as well as two ironed tuxedo shirts. We then walked over to the nearby plaza for
the #612 bus, for the thrilling roller coaster ride down Alegre hill, Cordillera
hill, Toro hill and Sto. Domingo hill to Plaza Aduana and then around the port
and up Playa Ancha hill. It was almost
as thrilling as skimming through the sand dunes near Dubai, United Arab
Emirates in September!
It will be easy to pack the nicely folded
clothes tomorrow. We poured another
glass of Cola de Mono before going out for dinner.
We splurged on dinner tonight at Restaurant
Calfulafquen on 21 de Mayo close to the Naval Museum. We had a table
overlooking the harbor and port. The water
in the horseshoe bay was calm, but further out to the Pacific Ocean there were
white caps on the low waves. From the open window, we could see a four mast wooden
sailing ship at the navy pier. The hostess,
who was leaving shortly, spoke English and helped us with the menu, as our
waiter listened, since he was learning English. We ordered Pisco Sour
cocktails. We had our first ones 5.5
years ago when we visited Chile. Then we ordered the special salad which was a
mixed salad with avocado and palm hearts added. The music which played very
quietly in the background was Christmas carols with Spanish words. We each ordered fish, either grilled salmon or
grilled congrio, which is a delicious white fish. It was not a huge bill, just
$73 Canadian – last of the big-time spenders! It was a mild (temperature 21 C)
evening for the 15-minute walk back to the apartment. We enjoyed a Nestlé instant cappuccino as we
read our books and wrote the blog.
Total steps
19,240 (14.23 km) and 126 flights of stairs on the Fitbit.
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