The sun is out today, after another night of torrential rain. Ive been visiting the local markets & doing some souvineer shopping. Pretty much every single building sells tourist things of one shape or another. Hanga Roa is a small, sleepy town of about 2500 people. Chickens, horses & thin non-aggressive dogs wander the streets, the locals mostly drive incredibly rustbucket cars that look like they could break in two at any moment. Bumpers, headlights, doors, windows are just things that vehicles can live without, so they do. The only modern cars seem to be the 4wds that are rented out to the tourists & are carefully washed of salt spray each night. The one petrol station on the island is deserted for most of the day but has a queue at about 6pm when all the tourists have to re-fill the tanks before returning their 4 wheel drives.
The locals are a friendly lot, mostly polynesian in looks (apart from the immigrants from Chile). There really isnt any industry here other than tourism, so i guess they like to keep the tourists happy (& sell them some carvings of Moai that they all seem to make.) Im trying to find a suitably nice carving for myself to take home. Shopkeepers with no customers can be found leaning agaist doorways, sanding down their latest small carving and/or watching the daytime soapies in spanish on tiny televisions. They all seem to work on 'island time' - maybe opening up their shops somewhere around 10-11am, have an extended siesta in the early afternoon, before closing up around 5pm. Around this time, the small plaza/park at the end of the main street, which has been deserted all day, fills up with locals & schoolchildren playing games, and everyone catches up of the days events.
The place where I am staying is right by the end of the runway, but this isn't really a problem as there is usually only two flights a week. It's a good 15 minute walk from the main part of town, so it's a bit of a pain to wander back & forth all the time. So I haven't tried out either of the two disco's in town as yet. Apparently there is a big sea-cave/lava tube in the cliffs very close to where i'm staying, but I can't find any signs or mention of it anywhere & I can't see anything from the seashore out the back. I shall do some hunting for it...
80's music is also huge here, as it is in Santiago (& Fiji apparently), but they also play some 90's/naughties stuff as well. Shakira is also big here - which is more understandable, given that she is at least South American. At the 'Ciber' cafe i have been frequenting, the playlist runs fairly consistently as; 80's song, 80's song, 00's song, local spanish or polynesisian-style song, Shakira, and then back to 80's again.
More soon...
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