Easter Island - wow!

---

Well, it´s been short but very sweet. We´re leaving Easter Island this evening and we´ve had a fab time here. The island is amazing, although the weather´s been a bit rubbish. We´ve climbed a volcano (and stood inside the crater - wow!), been to the beach, seen more Moai (big heads) than we can count and taken hundreds of photos... We´ve stayed in a really nice guest house, eaten good food, and made new friends in Rachel and Steve, who are 3 months into their round the world trip and who stayed in the same guest house. We hired a jeep with them and toured the island on Friday, it was a great day. I´ll put photos here when I manage to get them off my camera, it´ll be at least a week till I can do that. I´m making this short, but I´ll add more in a few days. We´re off to Tahiti for sand, sea and sunshine now :-) Adios! Jo and Graeme x

---

Photos

Moai
These are some of the big heads near Hanga Roa, the town on Easter Island.

Jo, Graeme and Rachel with topknot
The Moai originally had topknots on their heads, but when the Moai were toppled the topknots were scattered all over the place. They are huge!

Jo and Graeme with Moai
This was taken by a nice German man we met at the Moai. We took some pictures of him and his wife with the same statue!

Leaning Moai
This is one of the hundreds at Rano Raraku quarry.

Restored Moai
These 13 Moai were restored by the Japanese in the 60s after they were all toppled by a tidal wave. This was one of the coolest sites on the island.

Chilean Navy ship
This ship was anchored off the island the whole time we were there. Graeme almost got soaked by this big wave trying to take this photo.

Main street in Hanga Roa
Not exactly Sauchiehall Street!

Our last Cristal beer!
On our last day we took a $2 taxi ride to the airport, checked in our baggage, then walked the 10 minutes back into Hanga Roa for tea. We had our last Chilean beer here.

Anakena Beach
Anakena is the biggest beach on the island. These Moai overlook it - it was an amazing site with the palm trees beside them. Unfortunately it wasn't warm enough to sunbathe - and it was blooming windy!

The Birdman Islands
After the demise of the culture that made the statues, the island followed a cult whereby the young men who wanted to be chief had to jump off this cliff, swim to these islands, then get the first bird's eggs of the spring from these islands. The first one back was made the chief for a year, and lived in a specially build village on the cliff.