19^th November – Off to Easter Island.......

We had a horrible early start with a plan to get up at around 4.30am.  I woke up at 2am and that was it, so felt rather jaded by the time we finally got up.  Nestor, our guide who was so late for the Santiago airport pick up was there bang on 5am as promised and our 1.5-2 hour transfer to the airport was done in an hour with Nestor snoring loudly in the front seat of the mini-van.

Erythrina flowers

Nestor sorted out our baggage and boarding passes as there was a special line for Easter Island.  It was blindingly obvious which one it was as any one local had huge piles of luggage and packages. Apparently, it’s so expensive to buy things here that they all come back laden like donkeys.  We did wonder whether the plane would be able to take off with all the precious cargo on board!!  Anyway, it was a huge plane and packed and we soon found ourselves flying for 5 hours across the Pacific Ocean to one of the most remote islands on Earth.

Once we picked up our luggage, we found our guide and were welcomed with a big garland of flowers or leis to put round our necks – the garlands were made up of bougainvillea and Erythrina (coral tree) flowers and were really lovely.

The butterfly milkweed

Along with 3 very nice American ladies for New York, we were transported to our hotel which was about 6 kms from the airport.  The island itself is triangular in shape with a dormant volcano at each corner – the oldest one being 3 million years old and the youngest only 3000.  The 3 sides of the triangle measure 16kms, by 18kms and about 24 kms, so it’s not very big!  My 1^st impression of the island is that it looked rather similar to Devon or Cornwall (perhaps a little like Dartmoor?)with the old volcanic cones poking up through heather like flora.  It was much greener and lusher than I was expecting – I don’t why I was surprised as it is a semi tropical island.  I recognised quite a few of the trees – Eucalytpus, Erythrina, Jacaranda, Grevillea robusta from Australia and the Melia tree which is so common in Portugal.  Not so sure about the flowers though – I’m really taken with a very pretty orange and pink flower and have got some seeds which I hope I can get to germinate in Portugal (it's some sort of milkweed)

The bar and dining area

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Our hotel is amazing.  It’s low and curved and very modern and sits within the hillside.  The outer walls are made from the local larva so that it blends seamlessly into the surroundings.  Our room is really lovely – made from a lot of concrete though, which isn’t very environmentally friendly, and has a huge picture window with a wonderful view out over the plains to the sea and the youngest volcano.  It’s the sort of view you’d never tire of.

We had a superb lunch and then set out for our afternoon trip which was to the quarry where 97% of the moais (or heads) came from.  We went in the minibus with the 3 American ladies, who met through work over 20 years ago and enjoy travelling together, and, I have to say, make very engaging travel companions.  Our guide told us that there were between 6-8000 people living on the island today and about 8,000 horses who live wild.  We passed quite a few and noticed that they’re all branded.  We followed a grey horse for a while on a one track road, where there was no place for him to get away from us as the road was fenced either side, and I noticed that he was staggering a bit and seemed to have a strange gait.  The guide told us that he’d been eating the wild lupin (introduced by the national park as a food source for the horses, unbelievably), but it’s poisonous to them and that this horse had obviously eaten it and was dying and would be dead within 2 days.

Moais on the move.....

Anyway - on to the quarry.  As we drove towards it, all I noticed was a  superb cliff with black rocky outcrops that looked wonderful in the afternoon sun.  We parked up and started walking.  Suddenly, there they were – just masses of the famous elongated heads sitting within the grassy slopes all at different angles.  Words don’t really describe seeing them in real life.  We did a walk round them and even saw some still half quarried that looked like they were lying in tombs rather than waiting to be born.  The heads are only very basically modelled when they are 1^st quarried.  Finer detail such as the eyes and the back of the heads are done when they have been transported to their final destinations.  I was surprised to learn that this is a young culture with the Polynesian people only coming to Easter Island about 1500 years ago.

Mum's favourite moai - the leaning one...

The Moais were commissioned by the kings from various tribes and were often placed on their tombs.  The big mystery is how the heads were transported around the island and many theories exist to explain this.  One of the many is that they were rolled around on trunks of the huge palm trees that used cover this island and, after our tour of the quarry, we actually walked along an ancient moai road where we passed several still in transit.  This walk could have been most interesting but was done at a break neck pace set by our guide and it was very hot. Poor mum overheated and soon lagged behind and eventually had to stop and remove her vest!!  I enjoyed the varied flora which includes the tall lupin bushes covered in large seed pods that rattle like castanets as you knock them plus lots of wild guava bushes.  We also watched local hawks (the chimango cara caras)that were brought in from the mainland to eat the rats and have now bred very successfully and become carrion eaters - they also enjoy mobbing people and trying to steal their hats.

Before leaving the quarry, we walked up a short steep slope and had a wonderful view over a fresh water lake that was clearly located in an old volcanic cone.  A few erythrina trees in full blossom provided some very welcome shade from the strong sun. We also saw and heard some red billed tropic birds that I’d spent so long trying to photograph in the Galapagos.  Well, you wouldn’t believe it but we walked within 2 metres of a nesting one in the quarry walls next to a moai that was never born and is waiting in vain to be hacked free from the rocks.

The chimango caracara

We got back to the lodge somewhat exhausted from our early morning start and our energetic walk and after grabbing a drink from the bar, were ushered into an introductory presentation about the lodge, the island and its history and the choices of the various activities.  We made our selections for the following day and then had another amazing meal – half of which we left as there’s just too much food here – and then crashed.