Valparaiso, Chile: 10th – 12th March 10

On Wednesdsay we took the bus for 2 hours to Valparaiso, Chile’s second city. It’s in a beautiful setting, on a large bay on the coast, with hills all around. The city has lots of interesting architecture and is a UNESCO world heritage site – it’s also known as Chile’s bohemian and cultural center.



Whilst exploring on Thursday we took an old ‘ascensior’( i.e. lift) up one of the hill sides. These lifts are dotted all around the city as the hills are so steep, and many of them date from the early 1900s. As it started to make its way up it swung violently from side to side, and both Matt and I thought “creepers, they really need to oil the gears on this thing”! I remember thinking you really wouldn’t want to be in this if there’s an earthquake. Hmmm. Turns out that violent swinging was actually a 7.2 scale earthquake!



At the top of the hill we walked around for a while admiring the ‘wall art’ of the open-air museum. In London we would call this graffiti! As we were approaching the lift again a couple of old women standing outside their house started speaking to us, waving their arms in the air. We didn’t understand a word they were saying so carried on. In the lift on the way down there were more violent shakes – again we thought it was a dodgy gear shaft – turns out it was the 2nd earthquake of the day. Again we were oblivious.


Returning to the city center we discussed what the old ladies may have been on about – maybe it’s an earthquake again, we thought – after all, the big one was only 10 days ago and there are often after-shocks. We weren’t sure though, but suddenly realized there were lots of people on their phones. “Something is afoot” said Matt. “If it was an earthquake, there might be a Tsunami, and we’re on the coast – maybe we should go up a hill” said I. We carried on though, oblivious, heading back to take another lift up to our hotel.

Turning onto the main city center street we walked for a few yards until we suddenly saw a slightly disturbing sight. Round the corner from the harbour front came running a man, then another, then about a hundred men, women and children. They weren’t just running, but proper sprinting! “Why are people running” says I. ”Why are people running” says Matt looking more worried.

An overweight man in his 50’s reached us, stopped, panted and shouted “TSUNAMI – RUN”! Eh?

Arrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! We both looked at each other, looked at the hundred or so people running down the street at us – and ran, ran like the wind! (or a stiff breeze in my case!).

We were at the head of the crowd with a few people overtaking us when we rounded the corner into another main shopping street. All of the shoppers stared at us and the crowd around us as we ran through, some people shouting ‘Tsunami RUN’! I’ve never seen such terrified faces. Like us, they thought a Tsunami was about to come crashing round the corner any second. Women screamed, scooped up kids and ran – others just stood routed to the spot agog.

Luckily the town has many hills, so there’s always a steep slope nearby – hundreds of us headed for the nearest one and ran up it – looking back at the sea as we went.

The rumours were flying around…The tide had rapidly gone out – a sure sign of a Tsunami…The president had declared a state of emergency – he was actually being inaugurated a few minutes down the road at the time! Some people said it was just a precaution, but the first Tsunami warning they’d had in the city for years.

Everywhere we looked, on every hill top people just stood staring out to sea, waiting for something to happen. It was truly dramatic.

Luckily the Tsunami didn’t come – thank God! Still, it was scary enough to have to run through a city with hundreds of people. I love a good drama and a good disaster movie – but I don’t want to star in one!

The rest of the day was spent recovering from the shock – and having a nice dinner overlooking the sea – safely high up on a hill and thanking our lucky stars that things had turned out OK!