The city of Valparaíso

Valparaíso is a city so steep that it must be a colossal pain when you leave home and realise you've forgotten something. Where children probably learn the hard way not to drop the ball. A city that seems to mimic Chile's string-bean physique, hills plunging straight down to the Pacific.

Vertiginous staircases pass fields of wild nasturtiums growing on what could reasonably be described as cliffs. Houses are cantilevered across the valley, tethered in place by wreaths of Bougainvillea that glow a saturated, lysergic pink.

Even the houses draw your eye to the up-and-down, the corrugation of the plating casting long rows of striped shadow in the late afternoon sun.

Some of the murals are inane, but others are cries for Palestine, demands for missing Indigenous land defender Julia Chuñil to appear alive, depictions of men mugging tourists because their mothers deserve better than their lives of grinding labour. I think even the inane ones contribute to the sense of place.