Easter island: tasty fish, crappy rental cars, and lots of Moai..

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Okay, getting to Isla de Pascua was a bit more challenging then we had expected. After getting upgraded to Business (good!) we were told 2 hrs into the flight that we unfortunately had to return to Santiago due to a technical defect (not so good!). But fortunately we could embark on to a new airplane soon, and our delay was limited to about 5 hours.

When we got off the plane, we felt like we were arriving on the most perfect tropical island.. Nice sunny weather, a huge runway with only our plane, and already a view on the first Moai statues. Ahh.. Although it was already 6 PM, we learned we still had another 3 hours before sunset, so we quickly changed into our shorts and went on a walk through the mellow town of Hanga Roa. What a bliss! We were looking forward to 6 days of cycling, walking, seeing the island and its culture, and maybe even some swimming. We had a lovely dinner of fresh fish and salad, overlooking the sea, and just felt very very pleased to be here.

The next morning our enthusiasm cooled down a little bit though, as it was P-O-U-R-I-N-G rain. But we weren´t going to let that spoil the fun. Fortunately we had decided to rent a car for the first few days, rather than bikes as we had originally planned, so we went on our first tour around the island as planned. Many people seem to be taking the organised tours to get to know the island, but we were less keen on that. First of all, neither of us likes those kind of tours where you always move as part of a group, and it is decided for you how long or short you stay somewhere. Secondly, the tours were more than twice as expensive as just renting a car. Driving around the island is easy: there are basically only 2 main roads that both start in the south and go north. The one goes along the coast and the other one inland. And we had plenty of interesting information and background about all the islands wonders from the book ´A companion to Easter Island´ written by a Brit who moved to Easter island years ago. It is a bit of a mix between a guide book and a history book, and offers more information than I can imagine any tour would. So we happily went our own way, and explored the Moai, petroglyphs and the beautiful vistas across the island.

To give you some background on the island - Easter island is part of Polynesia, just like islands such as Tahiti and Hawaii. The island was formed by 3 volcano eruptions, which is still very clear from its current landscape. It was then first inhabited by Polynesians who came with canoes filled with local flora and fauna, to build a new home. According to the son of the owner of our hotel, Chilean rugby clubs come and recruit on Easter island because of this Polynesian heritage, as the men are so much stronger than the average Chileans. I can believe that, given that the Maori in New Zealand are Polynesians too..

Strangely enough, the rugged landscape actually reminded me a bit of Scotland. But of course the rain may have helped there 😉. However, the huge Moai on their 'aha' (platform) are not like anything I have ever seen before. These Moai were believed to contain the soul of former leaders of towns, which would protect the town and its inhabitants. Many of the Moai have fallen off their platforms though, and the ones that are still standing have been resurrected relatively recently, as part of restoration efforts. And for a change, it's not the European explorers who were to blame for all that has been destroyed. The draught that disrupted the life on the island had been at least partially caused by the deforestation as a result of the increasing 'Moai-madness', where everyone tried to build larger and larger Moai, and then needed lots of wood to transport them. That caused conflict between the tribes, who then tipped over each others Moai as a way to break each other's morale...

After the sightseeing, we went to the one Japanese restaurant on the island. Although the one tripadvisor review of ´better than any Japanese restaurant in London´ was a bit exaggerated (that guy probably only visited Yo sushi and Itsu), it was a really nice dinner: good, authentic, Japanese food, and a nice atmosphere. Of course, like any place on Easter Island, the menu was a bit limited by what´s on offer on the island, so the sushi and sashimi was whatever white fish had been caught that day.

We had already quickly noticed that there was not much variation in food at Easter island - neither in type, nor in price. As we had been warned for, food is expensive at Easter island. Not just in the restaurants, but also in the shops, as other than vegetables, fish, milk and maybe some meat, everything needs to be shipped over from the mainland. Therefore, everything is at least twice as expensive as in Santiago. We had been warned, and had therefore come with at least some snacks and wine from Santiago, to soften the pain a bit. A restaurant dish typically is at least 25 USD - very expensive compared to the rest of Chile . Over time, we discovered a few cheaper options for lunch (eg our favorite empanada place overlooking the football field), but that was about it. It must be said though that I have not had a single bad meal in our entire week at Easter island. I think I had more ceviche here than in Peru (no worries anymore about food poisoning), and many other tasty fish dishes..

We had managed to keep up the good spirit for our first day of rain, but it got harder on the second. There were no more sights to see easily by car other than a small museum (and the 2 major sights of Rano Raraku and Orongo, but we didn't want to 'waste' our single visit allowed for the 40 USD per person national park fee during bad weather..). As a result we ended up spending the morning reading in our tiny room.. At some point, that became a bit depressing. So when the rain got a bit less we put on our rain coats and went for a hike on Rano Kau, one of the volcanoes. We then also became familiar with the Easter island concept of stray dogs, which follow you everywhere throughout your entire hike (ours even followed our car), probably hoping for some food. Both sad and annoying..

Then after dinner, it was time for what was going to be the highlight of the day: a Rapa Nui dance show. Of course this show is packed with tourists only, but it actually feels really genuine. The dancers and singers perform the traditional dances with so much energy and enthusiasm, that it was really fun to watch. As you would expect, the concept of ' let's pull tourists on stage and have them make fun of themselves' (Steve's words) has also caught on here. Stephen was quite popular with the ladies, and was pulled on stage both times. The second time, he even became the 'main act', circumvented by several ladies and, after a bulky Rapa Nui guy had managed to sneak off his shirt, dancing bare chested for the audience. I have video proof!

From the 3rd day onwards, the weather started to clear up a bit fortunately. So it was time to continue our tour of the island. But there were some challenges involved with that.. Let me start of by explaining a bit more about car rental in Easter island. Not only food is expensive on Easter island, so is car rental (well, to be fair, everything is, but that set aside). The owner of our hotel had recommended this place to us where we could rent a car for 50 USD a day. Not cheap, but okay, doable. Our first car was pretty run down, and to top it off, Steve's window didn't close. Remember, that was the day it was raining like crazy. So we went back to exchange it. Next car - still crappy, and no locks. Well, we decided to keep this one for now. We were scheduled to switch to another (slightly cheaper) car on the 3rd day, which turned out to be a rambling Suzuki from 1976 (!). We were fed up, returned the car, and instead went for a hike along the coast on that third day. On our walk along the coast , we got a bit of an impression of what people used to live like, from the remainders of the tiny houses and the caves. Clearly more energy was invested in erecting huge Moai than building houses..

When we started looking at other rental places for the next day, we realised our rental place basically was a discounter with crappy old cars - and that the 50 USD was actually quite cheap. That would have helpful context info for our French hotel owner to provide, so at least we would have been able to make a more informed choice. Ah well. As we weren't going to drive much more anymore, but needed transport to get to the other side of the island, we decided to accept the offer of Frenchie to get us a better car this time, at a slightly higher rate. The car was indeed somewhat better, though it had several dents, and, - mom and Celeste, you may want to stop reading now- a cut out seat belt at the driver's seat and a dysfunctional one at the passenger seat, and no more air bag. Clearly the car had been into an accident and fixed up at the lowest cost possible. Apparently this is not uncommon, as all spare parts would need to get shipped and are therefore expensive. You see quite a few run down cars driving around the island.. We were fed up with all this car stuff though, and figured given the low average speed (to avoid the stupid cows and horses who tend to just walk out right in front of cars) on the island and the fact there are not really any crossings, we decided to stick to this car.

The next few days we explored Rano Raraku, the quarry where the Moai used to be made, went for a hike on Poike, another volcano which is closed off for traffic, watched the sunset at Tongariki, and even went to the beach for an afternoon when it was just about warm enough.

The quarry was one of the coolest things to see. This is where the carvers would work 1-2 years on a single Moai (there is another quarry with more reddish stone where they'd carve the topknots). They would start by carving the rough shape in the walls of the mountain, and when that was done, they'd 'separate' the Moai's back from mountain, and place it upright in the ground so they could do the precision carving. The Moai was then transported to its destination (there are multiple theories about the how, but it involved lots of wood, that's for sure), where the eye sockets would be carved and white coral eyes would be inserted. Therefore, any Moai that doesn't have its eye sockets carved out has never reached its final destiny.. The quarry is full with hundreds of Moai, some that were still being carved when the Rapa Nui suddenly abonded the Moai carving, but also many that broke down in transit, were waiting to be transported, or for whatever other reason never made it to its destination. Given the ratio of Moai found in the quarry vs on/near platforms, it seems the Rapa Nui were quite the critical bunch. It's also interesting to see how huge some of the Moai that have never been finished are , as the Moai-madness drove the carvers to make bigger and bigger Moai.

On the last day before our flight, we hiked up Rano Kau to see Orongo, the other major sight on the island. This used to be the most religious site on the whole island. The Rapa Nui had a tradition where the birdman, an important position on the island was chosen based on the birdman competition. Each towns head would send one young man to the competition, where they had to swim to the famous Moto Nui island where the Sooty Terns (birds) breed, wait for the birds to lay eggs, and swim back with an egg. The first one to return with an intact egg wins, and his chief becomes the birdman. Here you can see the religious village where priests and other important figures lived throughout the competition, and of course the island. Although the rough climate unfortunately has done a lot of damage, some of the old paintings are still visible. You also get some great views over the crater-lake right next to the village, but you have to be careful to not go to close, or the strong winds may blow you in further than you like!

The day of our flight was, ironically, like our first day. Sunny and hot, and no rain anywhere near. But unfortunately we were flying out that morning.. Ah well. We felt like we had seen everything we had wanted see on Easter island. We were ready for our next destination, Mendoza (after a quick visit back to our old friend Santiago en route..)

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