Little boxes on the hillside

For fun-loving adults who want to do sustainable good while exploring the colourful port of Valparaíso

THE BASICS

In Chile, Santiago’s rakish sailor brother is the port city of Valparaíso, with its handsome looks, edgy creativity and whiff of salt-air decay.

Valpo, as residents call it, was rebuilt after an earthquake in 1906.

Its mix of crumbling Victorian stone façade and sharp-edged, galvanisedmetal shacks are splashed with colourful paint and arresting graffiti. They clamber up from a wide Pacific bay and ramble across some 40 hills.

Although design-forward shipping container hotels have been popping up worldwide lately, Valparaíso winemaker Grant Phelps lays claim to being the first to build with them in this historic port.

He stacked 25 decommissioned containers like blocks to create 21 graffitied guest rooms. He also created jutting private balconies and two decadent terraces that beg for adult beverages (children under 12 aren’t allowed at the hotel).

The WineBox Valparaíso opened in February last year as sustainable lodging with attitude. It’s also an urban winery – Phelps, and often his guests, crush grapes and monitor ageing barrels of wine in the parking garage.

Rates: Rooms from 53 000 pesos (R1 114).

THE LOCATION

Most visitors wander a couple of Valpo’s most colourful hills, Cerro Alegre and Cerro Bellavista, which vibrate with clever graffiti and multistorey street-art murals.

The WineBox opens an adjacent hill, the previously residential Cerro Mariposa, to tourism. The hotel is a quick, if gradually sloping, walk to the most Instagram-ready sights, especially the late Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s fanciful Valparaíso home, La Sebastiana, rising like a ship’s prow from Bellavista. Valparaíso’s former prison, now the Parque Cultural, is less than 2km away.

Restaurants remain a bit scarce in the immediate area.

THE ROOM

The WineBox’s environmentalism is also evident in the rooms. They were insulated with projected cellulose, a material that includes recycled newspaper, from the noise I’d expected inside a metal shipping container. Even so, turndown service included earplugs (as well as dulce de leche candy).

The container kept its original long-rectangle shape, but felt bright and open, the far end a glass door leading to a deep balcony. Binoculars were provided for scoping the hillsides and port. Recycled pallets had been crafted into a bed, which felt cozy as a ship’s berth.

The room also held a kitchenette, which was stocked with salt and pepper and Chile’s favourite smoked pepper, merkén. The wine-only minibar offered a selection of five reds, two whites and a sparkling (from 9 000 to 19 000 pesos, all Chilean wines from independent vintners.

THE BATHROOM

A blurred porthole window allowed light in from the outdoor walkway, and a glass-block wall along the shower passed it on into the room. A concrete floor and coppery tiles made up the shower stall.

More wood pallets had been remade into a bathmat and mirror frame. Lights hung in upcycled wine bottles, greenish in tint but somehow flattering. Toiletries were big, reusable bottles of natural rosemary grapefruit shampoo and conditioner, and lemon-honey soap.

A “Stop the water while using me!” sign on the cleansers pleaded with guests to take “Navy” showers – turning the water off while sudsing.

THE AMENITIES

The hotel proprietor, Phelps, conducts daily hotel tours (15 000 pesos) for guests who are interested in the sustainability of the project. On mine he detailed how, as a Kiwi by birth, he’d taken inspiration from the way Christchurch used shipping containers to rebuild after New Zealand’s 2011 earthquake. His Chilean partner, architect Camila Ulloa, helped him design the WineBox. Our two-hour tour ended with sampling wine in the belowdeck parking garage (a rarity in steep, parking-challenged Valpo).

A welcome drink was redeemable at the rooftop bar. I followed mine with one of the sommelier-led wine tastings (15 000 pesos), which felt extra dreamy as the sun stole into the bay and illuminated the hillsides.

DINING

Breakfast was an ample buffet spanning bread, jam, fruit, cheese, olives, poached eggs, guacamole and grilled tomatoes. I ate on the lower terrace, where one-time sinks and bathtubs had been sawed into unexpected chairs.

The generous early meal compensated for the lack of an on-site restauran. Phelps plans to add a restaurant – and a rooftop hot tub in a massive old Chilean wine barrel – to the hotel this year.

Fun-loving adults who also want to do sustainable good should make WineBox their base for exploring the edgy, colourful port of Valparaíso.

THE WineBox Valparaíso in Chile, a hotel and urban winery created out of shipping containers and wrapped in a blanket of sustainability makes its mark on the undulating hills of “Valpo”. | WineBox Valparaíso via The New York Times

GUEST rooms at the WineBox Valparaíso come with a kitchenette, and rooms are insulated with material that includes recycled newspapers. | The New York Times

A BATHROOM with lights hung in upturned wine bottles that give off a greenish but still flattering tint at the WineBox Valparaiso in Chile. | The New York Times