First Days in Easter Island

After nearly 16 hours of travel we arrived in Easter Island on Wednesday morning.  This place has always had a mystical allure for both Kevin and I, and neither one of us ever thought we’d actually get to visit.

The moai are just as amazing as we imagined them to be.  We saw our first ahu (or group of standing moai) near the main town of Hanga Roa on the first day (after cleaning up some early mishaps, detailed later).  They are truly massive, and one definitely appreciates the effort it took to carve and transport these megaliths.

Our second day, we hiked up to the Rano Kau crater and the Orongo petroglyphs and ruins. On the third day we got up before sunrise and took went up to Ahu Tongariki to take photos at sunrise of the 15 moai lined up along the rugged coast. We then went to the quarry at Rano Raraku to see hundreds of the massive statues in various stages of completion. We ended the day at the beautiful Anakena Beach. We’ve met some great fellow travelers that have come along for the ride.

Other thoughts and experiences:

• We love LAN Airlines!  Kevin and I were able to watch movies and even play Battleship (against each other!) on the flight.  It made the long flight much more bearable, even though Kevin was a bit scrunched into the seats at his size.  The meals were pretty good, too.
• The island is very quaint and surprisingly undeveloped coastline. There are no chain hotels, nor chain stores of any kind. Because of LAN’s recent expansion of flights to the island from Lima, I would guess that development in some parts of this island is inevitable, so if you want to see its original charm, come sooner rather than later.
• Easter Island is set in a crazy time zone, the same as Chicago, but many, many miles West!  The sun doesn’t rise until almost 8:30AM and doesn’t set until 8:30pm
• Food is very expensive here. We’ve eatien lots of empanadas from roadside stands  and picking up bread and fruit at local markets. Tonight is our last night on the island so we’ll probably splurge on a seafood dinner for Kevin. As a vegetarian, I’ll take what I can get, but  I’ll hope to have some more camotes (a fried, purple skinned sweet potato)

Unnecessary screwups and timewasters:

• The island has about 4 ATM’s total, 2 take Mastercard and 2 take Visa.  This, plus the initial language difficulty–Cassie couldn’t translate all of the options on the ATM and when the withdrawal wouldn’t work, we thought our cards were not accepted. We spent our first few hours on the island very worried about cash problems. We’re lucky we had the spare US cash I almost forgot to bring (thanks to Hoan and Cesar for hassling me about this!)
• Unsure of the water situation, we initially went to some great efforts (and expense at $4 USD per liter!) to buy bottled water and even use a fellow traveler’s steri-pen (thanks, Ryan!) in order to make sure we were hydrated.   Later, we researched it only to find out the water in Hanga Roa is perfectly safe.
• Last, we forgot to research whether we’d need a power adapter for South America.  We did, then went to great lengths to borrow one from another traveler. (Thanks again, Ryan!) We found out later that our campsite (Camping Mihinoa) provides power strips that contain adapters for multiple formats.  We will eventually have to find an adapter, we’ll  probably work on that in Santiago.

But we’ll write more when we have a chance later. Here are just a few of our favorite photos so far:

Orongo Petroglyphs

Ahu Tongariki at Sunrise

Rano Raraku (The Nursery)

Rano Kau Crater