We´d booked tickets to Easter Island way back whilst in Cairns. After our success with the Quantas and Virgin web-sites, we´d gone out on a limb and typed our credit-card details into the Lan Chile web-site. Immediately, we started getting e-mails and phone messages from the airline. Turned out, they just wanted to know whether we´d stolen the credit card - fraud is a bit of a problem in South America. Eventually, the booking had been confirmed, but all we had was a printed out e-mail confirmation and we´d been wondering whether we would actually get to Easter Island. All the guide books say you definitely need to confirm your flight as there´s a scrum at the airport for seats and you may well not get on! In the end, and as you might expect from an award winning airline, even though the destination is a small island in the middle of nowhere, the flight´s no different from and other. In fact, it was only half full. Also, true to form, Lan Chile did us proud with the usual spanking new plane, excellent service and on-demand videos and music. Even Steve´s vege meal ordered over the internet when we booked turned up - we´d forgotten all about it! Anyway, on to the island...
3700 km out into the South Pacific off the West coast of Chile and 4000 km East of Tahiti, Isla de Pascua is known to the locals as Te Pito o Te Henua, "The Navel of The World", or officially, Rapa Nui meaning "Big Place". Big? If the language looks familiar, it´s Polynesian and has the same roots as the Maori we´d been seeing in New Zealand. This island is one of the remotest places on Earth and yet everyone´s heard of it and most know why it is famous. Mysterious Stone Heads - more on that later!
No problems landing on this little speck in the ocean either. The yanks decided Rapa Nui would make a good emergency landing strip for the space shuttle so the runway is immensly long. Don´t think they ever landed it here, but it would make an interesting spectacle. The runway runs the width of the island on the only piece of flat land there is. The yanks seem to have gone now, but they left behind the usual trappings; electrical power, a sealed road, babies. There´s even internet on the island - but only when it´s not raining!
We lodged at the Youth Hostel on the island. It´s perched up on a hill and looks down over the capital and only town, which is really just a few eucalyptus shrouded wooden sheds with tin roofs. We can sit out on the veranda and look out over the whole island with a volcano centre stage and the sea on either side. The church chimes ever hour and packs of dogs bark in the evenings, but otherwise, it´s rather peaceful.
The eucalyptus is a recent addition, the island was deforested a long time ago for sheep farming. There doesn´t seem to be a single sheep here now, but plenty of cows. Otherwise, horses are the animal of choice and plenty of locals seem to use them for transport. It´s common to see them tethered outside the "supermarket". Naturally, we tourists can hire horse and guide to go around the island should we prefer that to a hire car. Sensibly, given the proximity of the nearest hospital, we opt for the latter.
The capital of the island and also the only town, this small place manages to be amazingly confusing. There´s a maze [about 8] of cobbled and dirt streets and it took us a day or so to realise that they paint the street names on the kerb stones (or at least they did - about 50 years ago!). There are about 2900 people living on Easter Island and most seem involved in tourism in some way. There are local artesan shops everywhere. Of course, they all sell carved stone heads ranging in size from key-ring to gate-post. Or rather, they would sell them if they weren´t too busy being closed and having siestas.
Other than tourist tat, the only other thing to buy is food and that´s not particularly imaginitive. Chicken and chips seems to be the staple. There is locally caught fish available but it´s not very interesting. Otherwise, it´s lettuce and spaghetti. With the exception of the restaurants, everything seems to close at 1pm and open again at 6 until about 10pm. This is also the only place in the World we´ve been so far where the cash machine wouldn´t work for us. This could become a problem as we seem to be stuck here!
The local produce market seems to be open every day. It consists of all the locals driving their pickups to one spot in town and selling veg out of the back. Quite a good idea. As with markets the World over, prices to gringos vary dramatically and it pays to shop around.
One thing we had wanted to do here was go diving - if only so we could have a tee-shirt none of our diving buddies would have. We found Orca Diving down in Hanga Roa "harbour" (rocky outcrop with boat hidden behind it). In a mixture of Spanish and pidgin English, our diving options were explained to us. We ended up going out to some even smaller islands off the s/w corner of Rapa Nui called Moto Nui and Moto Iti where we dived in 50m visibility in the bluest water we´ve ever seen. Sheer volcanic walls and hard coral. Not much in the way of fish life and no wrecks, but been there, done that! At US$50 per dive you wouldn´t want to do it too often though!
What with settling in, diving, organising a hire car, etc, we´d been on Easter island 2 days before we even saw a head (other than the fake ones overlooking the jetty). Having always wanted to come here, this was one of the highlights of the whole trip for Steve and he was getting a little edgy. Eventually, our 4x4 turned up and we set off exploring. It pretty soon became apparent that there aren´t actually that many heads here! Well, not standing up anyway. There´s hundreds of Ahu (stone base & shrine) and very many Moai (heads) lying, rather sadly, face down in the grass where they were toppled during inter-tribal rivalry. Most of the ones you can see standing have been re-erected.
None the less, we travelled right round the island visiting all the sites and taking the requisite pictures. Those who get to see any of our photos wil be convinced the island is covered in heads - we´ll perpetuate the myth! The main exception is a volcanic crater called Ranu Raraku where the heads were hewn from the rock. Hundreds of heads in various states of completeness dot the landscape. In particular, a newly hewn figure would be burried up to the neck to facilitate carving facial details so there are heaps of heads sticking out of the ground in a rather weird way. The heads would be commissioned by the tribal leaders to be carved and placed above the village for power and protection. Contrary to what you might imagine, they did not face out to sea, rather inland.
It´s pretty strange to see a head poking out of the ground and realise that you are actually on Easter Island. Where you can see faces, the expressions are pretty enigmatic. Some of the dudes had strange red top-knots carved from a different volcano.
Superficially, the locals are very cheery and willing to chat with tourists. However, we detected a subcurrent of cynicism. Prices are about 4 times what they are on the mainland and this cannot be solely explained by the distances. We paid for the plane to come here with the none so cheap air fares so goods can´t cost much to ship here. We also paid departure tax even though it´s a domestic flight and GBP10 to visit the "Park". i.e. the island. They have no qualms about turning you away at restaurants, which suggests too much profit. Tourists are charged to cash travellers´ cheques but locals aren´t. There´s barely any hot water even though we were assured it was 24x7 when we checked in - in Spanish so there´s no misunderstanding. Obviously, we don´t mind the lack of it, but they should be more honest.
The island is much bigger than we expected so the 4x4 was vital. In fact, the roads are so bad that off-roading was about the most exciting part of being here. There were stories of visitors paying for guided tours and ending up spending most of the day on a beach, so we decided to do it ourselves.
The heads are worth seeing if they are something you have always wanted to see and, if you´re a diver and already here, it´s worth diving. Otherwise, on balance, we´d say don´t bother coming here. It´s an huge distance [and cost] from anywhere and not particularly convenient. Certainly, we´d recommend going to the Galapagos before coming here and, if you want isolated island, try Lundy! Alternatively, for diving, go to Bikini.
Then again, we get to say we´ve been here along with Thor Hyerdal!
We planned to stay 4 days but got stuck here due to bad weather. At the time of writing, we don´t know how long this will be but it´s at least another day. There´s nothing more to see here now so we´re catching up on some reading, e-mails etc. If you do plan to come here, two or three days is plenty.