Three days in Valparaiso: a port that never bothered with flat ground

About three hundred thousand people live here, most of them on the slopes, and the layout is the whole character of the place: a narrow flat strip of banks, warehouses and the parliament, and above it an amphitheatre of houses in every colour that corrugated iron takes.

Two nights covers the two central hills properly, Neruda's house, the market and the naval museum, with time to get lost, which is the main activity. The city is small enough that nothing here is more than twenty five minutes' walk from anything else, uphill excepted.

There is no airport. Coaches run from Santiago every twenty minutes or so and take about an hour and a half from the Pajaritos terminal on the western edge of the capital, which is also where the airport bus drops you, so arriving straight from an international flight without going into Santiago is easy and cheap.

In the city itself, El Plan is the flat strip along the water and everything else is above it. The ascensores, the surviving hill lifts, are the point and the transport: pay at the hut, ride up, walk along the top. Which ones are running changes year to year, so accept whatever is working on the day.

Colectivos, black taxis with yellow roofs running fixed routes, cost a little more than the bus and are the practical way up to La Sebastiana or back from a hill at night. Merval, the coastal light rail, is useful for Vina del Mar and not for anything within Valparaiso.

Two of the forty two hills carry most of what visitors come for. Cerro Concepcion and Cerro Alegre sit side by side above the port, and their paseos, the balcony walkways along the cliff edge, are where the German and British merchants built. They are the pretty ones, and they are full of guesthouses, cafes and murals.

Cerro Artilleria to the west has the naval museum and the widest view. Cerro Bellavista, behind the centre, has the open-air museum of murals and La Sebastiana above it.

Wear shoes with grip. The cobbles are worn smooth, the stairs are steep and often wet, and there is no route between two points that does not involve climbing.

Seafood, and better here than in Santiago because it does not have to travel. Machas a la parmesana, razor clams grilled with cheese, is the local plate people argue about. Congrio, chorrillana, a mountain of chips and beef and egg meant for four, and a very good cheap lunch in any place with a set menu chalked outside.

The restaurants on Cerro Alegre and Concepcion are the interesting ones and are mostly small, so book at the weekend. Down in El Plan, the old fishermen's places near the market do the same fish for half the money and close in the afternoon.

Chile is a safe country and Valparaiso is the part of it where you have to pay attention. Pickpocketing and bag snatching are common: do not hang a bag on the back of a chair, do not walk with a phone out, and keep the camera away except when you are using it.

The Puerto district around the docks is best avoided even in daylight, and the hills away from Concepcion, Alegre, Artilleria and Bellavista are residential and not for wandering. Take a colectivo or a taxi after dark rather than walking down an unlit staircase. None of this is a reason not to come; it is a reason to be less relaxed than you would be in Santiago.

The coast is cooler than Santiago all year and often under cloud in the morning that burns off by noon. December to March is the reliable season and also when Chile is on holiday, so book ahead. The last night of the year is a national event here, with an enormous firework display fired from the bay, and the city is full and expensive for it.