I’ve just got back from a holiday in Easter Island and Chile

Our final stop was Valparaíso, a two-hour drive from Santiago, a port city clinging to steep hillsides overlooking the Pacific

It’s not a beach town, but a working port, famous for its colourful clifftop homes, creaking funiculars, and the heart-stopping Red Bull Valparaíso Cerro Abajo, a downhill mountain bike race that rockets through its narrow streets

(If you haven’t seen it, check out the 2025 race video here, thank me later!)

(Valparaíso also gave the world Los Jaivas, Chile’s answer to Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull)

It's home to a thriving Bohemian artist quarter, where we stayed

If you know the UK, imagine Brighton, but without the pebble beach and with far steeper hills

What makes Valparaíso truly unique, though, is how it has transformed its graffiti problem into a citywide art gallery

Street art has rules and hierarchy: artists start with stickers, then tagging, and if they earn respect, they move on to murals

Tagging, a quick, 15-second scrawl, marks territory, but murals? 

They’re sacred

You don’t paint over someone else’s mural unless you’ve got good reason

Over time, something beautiful has happened

When buildings get tagged, muralists offer to paint them and once a mural is in place, no one touches it

The result?

A city bursting with colour and creativity, where once there was only vandalism and grey walls

During our stay, we even took a street art course and seeing our work join the patchwork of walls made me appreciate the spirit of Valparaíso even more

See photo for our street are contribution to the city

Conclusion:
Valparaíso is more than a city, it’s a living metaphor for transformation

It shows how problems can become strengths, how chaos can become creativity, and how, with the right mindset, even graffiti can become art