After 24 plus straight hours of travel, 5 airports, 4 airplanes, 5 movies on the planes, 4 meals on the airplanes and customs and a taxi later, I finally made it to Easter Island. It does not disappoint! But I know my words won^t do it justice. Also, you will note I am on a Spanish keyboard and they don{t work the same as ours. . . sorry for all the typos and weird characters.
It is 21:00 as I start to write this. It still hasn{t gotten dark and no one seems to be thinking of dinner. So, I am updating and when done will go find some food. I arrived at about 13:30 Easter Island time. The airport is pretty small. One gate. The runway is the longest in the oceania islands since the US expanded it so that the Space Shuttle could use it as an emergency landing if needed. Flying in you come from the Northeast and then swing by the west side before turning the south end and landing east to west. So you get a great preview before you even step off the plane. It is small!! 62 or 66 square miles. One town, Hanga Roa. and a couple of volcanoes. I am staying at Hotel Otai, which is considered top end. . . yes, considered top end and probably is comparatively. The grounds are beautiful. There are gardens and flowers everywhere. The room is small, but clean and i have my own bathroom, which is clean. so i can{t complain. They had a suzuki 2 door jeep to rent me and so i got the car and headed out to start exploring. During my 24 plus hours, i literally poured over the Complete Guide to Easter Island and didn{t think i needed a guide after that and another book i started and finished on Easter Island while getting here.
BAsiclly, I covered the Southwest today and will hit the Northeast tomorrow. The "roads" are just as rough as all the guide books say. I still feel like i am bouncing in my seat. I will forever think of metal tire irons clanging and hear the sound of a used jeep bouncing over the dirt roads when i think of this place. It is great though, because you can cover the entire island very easily. The roads are just rough and bumpy and obviously not paved (but for a few in down town). They are more like dirt car paths. Also, there luckily aren{t many roads because none have street signs. The maps you use do, but not the roads themselves! So, you just look at th map and then if you see a road heads north, then you try to follow it north as best you can. So far i only have gotten so lost or turned around that i had to turn back once. I started trying to go straight to Ahu Akivi first. This site has 7 maoi on an ahu. The maoi are the stone statues the island is so famous for. An ahu is the ceremonial bed that was built to stand them on. Ahu Akivi were the ones i was most familiar with and they are the only ones that face the ocean so i was starting there. . . or tried to. i couldn{t find my way and ended up going counter-clockwise around the island--which turned out better anyway. That put my first site as the Tahai complex. It sits on the west side of the island and has 3 ahu. One has 5 moai, the middle has one and the right one has one, but it has a topknot and the eyes are in. So, you got to see all three types all at once and they are all on the coast with the pacific ocean crashing into shore behind them.
Words really cannot do it justice. I hope to load a few photos. I won{t be able to load the good pictures becuase they will be too big, but i tried to take a few just to give you the feel for what i am seeing.
After Tahai, i went to Ahu Akivi and saw Ahu Tepeu along the way. The Ahu Akivi was impressive. The moai stand facing ceremonial grounds. The only reason these face the sea is that the ceremonial grounds are in between the moai and the sea. Amazingly, it has not been really crowded. I expected to be fighting crowds at each spot, but so far have not had any trouble getting shots wihtout any people in them and even having the place to myself some.
After Ahu Akivi, i went to Puna Pau. This is the topknot quarry where they made the topknots. Tomorrow will start with the moai quarry. You have to walk on trails to get to most of these sites. Akivi was pretty much on the road, but not the ohters i did today. One thing you will notice quick is that it is windy!! I mean blow you down, lean into it, never stops windy. Whipping hair that wants to get in front of the camera lens windy. For some reason Puna Pau was especially windy so i didn{t stay too long there.
All along these roads, you can only drive in 2nd gear. i{ve gotten to put it in 3rd a few times in town on the paved road or on one particularly well kept dirt road. Otherwise, you are creeping along avoiding the holes and driving 20 km an hour. So, it takes some time to get everywhere. The ohter reason you are driving slow is that animals -- large animals -- are all over the place and will step right in front of your car. Mostly horses and several with new foals right now, but also huge cows and bulls. and dogs--but only seen a few of those. So, you have to go really slow for all these free roaming animals.
After the topknot quarry i went back to the hotel and swam. . . i was so hot and dusty. Remember the road is not paved and the car doesn{t have airconditioning so you get a nice film of dust on you! And then feeling much more refreshed, i went back out and went to the Southern tip of the island and saw the Rano Kau volcano and Orongo. Orongo is where the birdman competition was held each year. The men would jump off this 3000 cliff and then swim in shark infested waters to an island where they waited on these birds to lay eggs. Whoever got back to the mainland with the first bird egg was the Birdman for the next year. It is like royalty. Orongo has caves where they lived, the cliff, the islands off the coast and some carvings in teh stone of the birdman motiff.
The internet cafe i am in is about to close. There is one more. if it is open, i{ll add pictures tonight.
Having a GREAT time!! Easter Island is living up to all expectations so far. Tomorrow is another full day. Finish the island.
