If you stay in Santiago, you must visit the calm town of “Isla Negra” in the central coast. Less than one hour from Santiago where the main house of Pablo Neruda is located and at this time is a museum.
 
This house was the favorite of the poet and Nobel Prize of Literature. In this interesting excursion you’ll be able to appreciate the collections of objects that he collected throughout his life. The house is full of magic and memories of the poet, consul and great man who among other works was an important precursor from the arrival to Chile of the Winnipeg, a ship with more than two thousands Spanish refugees who after the defeat of the Republica in the Spanish civil War did not have nation.
 
In 1939, Neruda bought a little stone house on a rocky bit of coast about 45 minutes south of Valparaiso. The house in Isla Negra was remodeled by Neruda and rooms were added throughout thirty years. Different from La Chascona, Isla Negra is centered around the sea. He wanted to build the house to resemble a ship because although he loved the ocean, he was not a lover of sailing. He referred to himself as a "navegador de la tierra" (inland sailor) and Isla Negra was his ship.
 
The living room, completely covered by weather beaten dark wood salvaged from old ships, certainly reminds one of the cabin on an ocean-going ship. Large imposing carved ship-figureheads, all with their own name given by Neruda, stand, hang, and lean throughout the room.
 
The study at Isla Negra demonstrates Neruda’s fervor for collecting. He was an avid collector of weird and wonderful things. Grinning African and Southeast Asian masks and a large collection of butterflies and beetles greet you at the entrance. Much of the extras from his collections of Isla Negra were used to replenish articles destroyed at La Chascona and La Sebastiana.
 
It was among these walls where the poet spent most of his time in Chile, along with his third and last wife, Matilde Urrutia. And here is where both of them are buried facing the ocean. Visiting his house is getting to know an important part of Chilean history, as in its rooms Neruda received his friends and colleagues, sharing drinks while dreaming of a better world.
 
After the 1973 coup and Neruda’s death, these houses were completely ransacked damaging much of Neruda’s collectibles.