Easter Island, Chile
Thursday, August 4, 2005
We left Santiago deciding we preferred the lovely coffee liqueur here to the more popular Pisco Sour (the traditional drink), we we bought a 2nd bottle (HIK) to take to Easter Island. Our flight with 'Lan' was as good as all the rest and saw our safe arrival (complete with floral necklace) on Easter Island after five and a half hours (so pleased we decided not to swim across the Pacific!!). Initially it appeared more inhabited than we'd imagined but soon discovered that basically the population of 3,700 live in, or around the only small town on Hanga Roa with its one supermarket, one post office, one church etc. You have plenty of choice in the supermarket as long as salt and oil are on your list, and are partial to brown, God knows how old cauliflower. However, you can't really expect more for a 'dot' of an island in the middle of the Pacific and we managed quite well considering! The volcanic coastline is spectacular, the thunderous waves a glorious sky blue colour and there are more Moai stone statues here than you have had hot dinners!!! This also came as a great surprise to us. The longest line of 15 which were knocked over by a Tsunami were kindly stood back up by the Japanese during 1993 and make for an excellent photo. We visited the quarry where they were carved out horizontally (amazingly as they are huge!!) with so many having been left half finished at the time the long eared tribes were wiped out. We also saw the only sandy beach during the day we hired the 4 x 4 jeep and it was certainly a good way to explore the island. Take care though, no insurance or paperwork here and boys will be boys (many unmade roads). We left Easter Island on one of the two planes which fly out per week to Tahiti.
