Sunday, April 27

We're back from "Paaseiland", as it was called by its Dutch discoverer Jacob Roggeveen. The pilot on the plane called it Eester/Iester Iceland and the locals call it Rapa Nui, so you'll probably understand where we are now.

This most remote island of the world lies 3700 kilometers west of mainland Chile and measures about 50 by 25 kilometers. It's a tropical island, but unfortunately, we again had a lot of rain. Still, it was very warm.
Easter Island is famous for its Moai's; stone statues of men, standing at several places around the island. Some of them are very tall and it's amazing to think of how they were moved to their places. Read here more about Moai's and the rest of the culture if you're interested.

We rented a car one day to drive around the island and see the Moai's and their birthplace: a volcano where the statues were carved out of the rocks.
The next morning we wanted to go see the sunrise at a beautiful place, so we got up at 6.00 o'clock. It turned out the sun only came up at 7.30 and that it was going to be a very cloudy, rainy day....so we didn't see any sunrise! Jeroen promised himself never to get up so early again for a supposedly beautiful sunrise... ;-)

The last day, we planned to go horse-riding, but the rain came pouring down so we spent the day reading our books and visiting the nice museum in town about the history and culture of Rapa Nui.
After 3,5 interesting days, it was already time to leave, back to Santiago with a 5-hour flight. In Santiago we met the Dutch couple Hein and Marriette again, whom we met also at the beginning of our Chile trip. The next morning we flew to Mendoza in Argentina, where we are now.. The flight took only 30 minutes, so by the time the pilot introduced himself, he also announced the landing!

Easter Island is very expensive, almost everything has to get flown in from the mainland, but the food is delicious. The last day we saw an enormous Swordfish being brought on land that they had just caught. That evening we went to eat fish, and the restaurant said they didn't have Tuna or other fish, just Swordfish...it tasted very good!
The people are very friendly and with a population of ony 3900, they all know each other. It's a beautiful island, but we couldn't imagine living there all our life, in just one small town and nowhere else to go!