Back on the Mainland
Trip Start
Aug 10, 2008
1
9
21
Trip End
Sep 20, 2008
Santiago,
Chile
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The next morning we headed off to Easter Island. I have wanted to go there since I first heard about the giant Moai (stone heads), so I was very excited. It's a long flight to get there, nearly 6 hours, but we were in a brand new and very comfortable plane with individual tvs, so the time passed relatively quickly. Landing on Easter Islandis odd, the entire island has only 4500 inhabitants, there are no traffic lights, no hospital, 1 ATM, and 5 days a week a giant plane lands andhordes of tourists from Santiago descend on the Island(there are also multiple flights a week from Tahiti). Yet, somehow, you can findyourself almost completely alone at certain points on the island.
We found ourselves a hotel--primitive, complete with dead cockroaches in the bathroom and the 2nd worst bed I've ever slept in (Big Sur still wins for the worst) but redeemed by lots of hot water, an excellent breakfast, and the owner renting us his own car for far less than the prevailing rate. We wandered off to see the nearby Moai-there are 3 at the endof the island that the town is on. It was extremely windy, but beautiful sitting and observing them.
The next morning we were woken by roosters, and after breakfast, hopped in the rental car to make our circuit of the Island and see the other moai. We started with a restored village near town-at some point the Islanders stopped making moai and started the birdman cult, and moved to this end of the Island. The cult involved an annual contest where each tribe sent a candidate over to some rocks across a thin strip of water where a certain bird nests. The first one to find an egg strapped it to their forehead and swam back to Easter Island where that tribe's leader got some sort of benefit.
When Europeans first came to the Island, all the moai were standing and the Islanders were thriving. When they came back 100 some years later, all the moai had been toppled and the population decimated. The prevailing theory is that too many trees were cut down, all the fertile land was eroded, and as food and resources grew scarce, tribal warfare broke out. In any event, many of the moai aroundthe islandhave been knocked down, but several sites have been restored. There's one main road around the island's coast, as well as one that cuts through the middle. Parts of the coast road are paved, although it's so badly potholed that the dirt roads are often more comfortable to drive on. We had tremedous luck visiting sites, usually leaving just as a tour van would arrive. So we got to have most sites largely to ourselves.
In addition to the moai sites, there are several beautiful beaches, and Raro Rakuno volcano. The volcano is where all the moai were carved, then lifted out over the rim andtransported to various places on the island. There's still debate about how they were moved, but no matter how it was done, it must have been a tremendous effort. The hill of the volcano is absolutely littered with moai in various positions and of various sizes. I think this was my favorite part of the Island.
We ran into a bit of a snag our last day as the hotel staff had changed and the woman working that morning wouldn't accept dollars (although her son had told us it was ok the previous day), the ATM was out of money, and the money-changing office was also apparently out of money until later that morning (but we had a plane to catch). We hadn't been able to resolve this earlier because nothing on the Island has weekend hours. Luckily, the long line in the bank moved quickly and we were able to get our pesos and still make our plane (with plenty of time to spare in fact.)
Back on the mainland we headed to Valparaiso for an overnight and spent the morning there. Sadly, it was raining, so we didn't have good visibility, but it was a lot of fun wandering through all the narrow, winding, hilly cobblestone streets. Many of the hills are so steep that they built funiculars and elevators to save people from having to climb them. We rode 3 of the ascenciors, including the oldest one in Valparaiso. After a late lunch, we hopped on a bus back to Santiago.
Tomorrow we have a taxi coming at 4:30 am to take us to the airport to our flight to Calama, Chile to visit the Atacama desert. We're expecting cold weather and interesting landscapes.
A few interesting facts about Chile: gas here in Santiago is about $1.40 a liter, so a little more than at home. On Easter Island, it's about $1 a liter, apparently it's subsidized by the Chilean government. In Ecuador, the gas was just over a dollar a gallon. Also, people in Santiago seem to consider the current weather to be very cold, everywhere we go people are wearing winter coats, scarves, and hats while we find ourselves stripping off layers.
