The random adventurers: Home away from home

Lovingly dedicated to the exchange students of Casa Mariposa, especially to our beautiful friends Davide and Pippo.

We ended up spending six weeks in Valparaiso, trapped by the charm of its winding steep hills and stairs, its raw locals, the beautiful sunsets and the ubiquitous street art.

Eclipsing every other city in Chile.

And the yummy empanadas.

Chey's beautiful eye for pictures+ Valparaiso= awesomeness

"Monument to WC, world's heritage"

A crazy house.

Plants turned into hair and body hair for a colorful
painted lady.

Art. Art EVERYWHERE.

And stairs.

And cats.

After the end of February, Mariposas the hostel turned into Mariposas the exchange student house, which meant the dynamics of the house changed enormously.

The first two weeks it had been a travelers heaven: clean, with a chilled atmosphere by day and a great terrace party at night, full of good wine, good music and good conversations.

Overnight, with the arrival of the students, it became a mess inside the house, due to everyone being too busy studying and the cleaning lady unfortunately dying.

But it also turned into something out of control at night, with a mad terrace party full of canned beer, horrible music and loud drunk yelling. We are clearly too old for that kind of student parties.

Still we became friends with two of the students (and friendly with many): two wonderful Italian guys who were always happy to share their cooking wisdom with us and didn't mind our no-partying-with-shit-music policy.

Our dynamics also changed quite a bit during that time.

To begin with, we were the only travelers left, ant the only sort of adult-minded people, according to Kent, save three of four of the students.

So we suddenly switched from the last people to go to bed, to the responsible adults in charge of the house's "order".

Ah, but I haven't told you about Kent!

He is an expat from the States, the owner and king of Mariposas, and a very special man.

During the time the house was a hostel he would usually hang around at the terrace since the afternoon, sharing his nice wine with us and starting interesting conversations and debates.

He has a way that keeps people charmed, even if he can be a little bit too strong on his way of exposing his ideas.

He also has a wonderful amount of very cool stories of his life (which was a very interesting one), and of people that went through the hostel (not for nothing the top rated one in Valparaiso).

We enjoyed debating and arguing with him a lot, since I don't mind confrontation when faced with a worthy "opponent" and Chey has a very philosophical mind. We even had quite a few religious debates, despite that unwritten rule about not talking religion, politics or soccer if you want to keep peace.

For a while, Chey was helping Kent by painting the roof and doing some other jobs, and ended up building a full deck. And I must say he did a very neat job.

Chey, a boss on the roof (don't worry parents, it was not steep)

Chey's deck, work in progress.

And finished! (*random guy not included)

Oh, what a beautiful deck! And there's also Kent.

Like that, we made Valparaiso "home" until the end of March, when the arrival of that envelope from Australia set us free to keep going.

We hugged our wonderful italian mates goodbye, thanking them for all the shared dinners and hoping to meet up again somewhere in the world, and we saw the relief in most of the students' faces when they saw the back of us. Now they could play their reggaeton in the living room all night and never do dishes again.

WARNING: The rest of this post is a bunch of Valparaiso pictures, because when it comes to that city we're like a teenager in love for the first time and just can't get enough of its beauty. You have been warned.