In October 2017, I made a day trip by bus (which run every few minutes) from Santiago to Valparaíso, the dilapidated port city. The city’s golden age was from the mid-nineteenth century until 1914, when the Panama Canal opened — after the canal opened, ships from the eastern United States and Europe could transit the isthmus instead of voyaging around Cape Horn, so fewer ships called on Valparaíso. Nowadays, the former “Jewel of the Pacific” is best known for the graffiti that wallpapers nearly every exposed surface of the ramshackle buildings that line its cobbled streets and alleys.

While I generally avoid walking tours, and, in fact, can't recall having taken any other, I did join Tours 4 Tips "free" (tip only) walking tour (https://tours4tips.com/tour/valparaiso-highlights/) that took in the port city's highlights, including Plaza Sotomayor, the funiculars, the hills of Cerro Alegre and Concepcion, and the "best" graffiti. The streets are labyrinthine and the maps terrible, so it would have been much more difficult to have attempted to find all of these sights without a guide, especially because I had only allotted myself a day in Valparaiso.