Day 24: Easter Island

We woke up at 5:15 this morning to get to the Santiago airport in time for our 8:10am flight to Easter Island. Everything went smoothly and we ended up in Easter Island around noon. The owner of our hotel (Joseph of Chez Joseph) met us at the airport with welcoming leis and drove us to the hotel with a short tour of town on the way. Chez Joseph is basic but comfortable and is more like a cross between a motel and a B&B.




We wandered off to explore the one and only town of Hanga Roa, starting with lunch at Restaurante Pea which overlooks the water.




So far, Easter Island seems like a scruffy but fun beach town with lots of surfers in the water and lots of low key cafes and restaurants.




We have already gotten a glimpse of a few moai, which are the statues left by the ancient Rapa Nui culture.




After lunch, we walked all around the town and bought ourselves some postcards, which we wrote out over a few Escudo beers while sitting at another restaurant overlooking the water. There are random horses meandering around, crossing the road whenever they feel like it.




So far the only negative is that there are packs of dogs roaming the town that seem to attach themselves to tourists and make walking around sort of unpleasant. To make matters worse, it appears the packs are forming because the females are in heat... oh well, no island is perfect, I guess.

In the evening, we went to watch the sunset at an area near town that has 5 moai set up by the water - known to be a good vantage point for sunsets. Although it wasn't a particularly colorful sunset, it IS beautiful to see the moai with the light behind them.






This moai is one of a few that have the "pukao" - some type of hat or top-knot made of a red stone called scoria.



Note: All of the moai on the island were toppled by the native islanders at some point for uknown reasons (one hypothesis is inter-tribal warfare) so any that are now in place have been re-erected more recently and are only a guess as to where and how they had previously been arranged.

Afterwards, we had dinner at a restaurant called Cafe Ra'a which is nearby on the "main street". So far we all agree that Easter Island seems promising!

ILM