Nov 5, 2017
I know there’s a million of blog posts already out there about how to get to Valparaiso from Santiago, but the more the merrier right? 🙂
We took the “turbus” (toor-boos) bus to Valparaiso and the entire trip was about 1 1/2 hours. We found 2 bus terminals in Santiago that has frequent buses for Valparaiso, terminal Alameda and Pajaritos. There’s probably more but these are the 2 we considered. There is a metro station right on both of these terminals. Pajaritos is farther on the metro line 1 than Terminal Alameda which is on metro stop U. de Santiago, also
on the same metro line. There is a metro station called Estacion Central which really is the main station in Santiago but the buses to Valpo operates on an adjacent building so you will have to walk a little bit to reach it if you get to Estacion Central. It can also be confusing because Estacion Central is really big – it also has the trains and buildings with stores so if you are carrying luggages, it’s best to get off at U. de Santiago, then terminal Alameda will be right there when you come up from the metro stairs. This one below is Estacion Central and this structure is where trains leave from.
There’s no need to buy tickets ahead of time. Buses depart from Alameda every 15-20 minutes. Turbus and Pullman are the 2 main big companies. We went with Turbus – not for any particular reason, we just picked it. The green color looked nicer on the bus :). As soon as we went inside the terminal there were so many bus company employees trying to get your attention, whether to actually sell ticket or help I am not sure. We just ignored them and went straight to the ticket counter that said Valparaiso. We got tickets for the bus that leaves in about 10 minutes. We then went straight back to the platforms and after waiting for less than 5 minutes, a bus with VALPARAISO written in front pulled up.
We then went to the bus, checked in our luggages (they gave us claim tags) and got in the bus. No sweat.
The bus ride was pretty uneventful. The first half of the ride was not very scenic, but as we got closer to Valparaiso then there’s wineries and lots of pretty wildflowers in bloom along the side of the freeway. Once we reached the Valparaiso terminal, we just followed the signs for taxi and got a cab to our hotel.
After spending several days in Valparaiso we thought if we have to do this again, we would probably rent a car in Santiago, and drive to Valparaiso and stop at wineries along the way. Driving in this area was pretty easy and there were lots of wineries along the route between Santiago and Valpo.
Through a Curly Girl's Lens 