Boy oh boy .... since out last installment we have been busy with all things Easter Island. The 09-09-09 day - we woke to absolute pissing down torrential rain. Sat around for an hour or two, and then thought F it, and got on our rain gear and headed off as planned to do the hike up the volcano to the Orongo village and center of the birdman cult - where each year different tribes would send their hot-shot tough dude to swim out to an island through shark infested waters to get and bring back the first sooty tern egg of the year. Which ever tribe got the egg basically called the shots for the whole year. Anyway ... it was a great hike, we got completely soaked and got to view all the sites alone .... well actually the area was closed (may be why it was deserted...), but we thought as we had hiked through a rainstorm that the rules didn't really apply ... The best part was the inside of the crater - full of vegetation and a riot of color - spectacular - neither of us had ever seen anything like it before. On our return spent the rest of the evening drying out ... Great day to turn 40!!! Brilliant.
Today ... gorgeous weather - hiked out to several sites - 8 hours worth of hiking to the top knot quarry (where the huge red headdressed that many of the moai (statues) have were carved), to an ahu with the famous Inca walls (leading to much speculation about whether the Easter Islanders had sailed to Peru or vice versa), and to a great site called Ahu Akivi with seven moai facing out towards the ocean. Ate our lunch here, then long hike back to the coast and down past more statues and platforms into town. It was about a 24km hike (?10+ miles) and really good (if a bit on the tiring side). A couple of miles were added in due to the fact that our take on a path was "dirty muddy little side track thing" and the map's take was apparently "main road back into town". Our reward was sitting at a coastal cafe drinking cafe con leches and eating home made ice cream (pear flavor!!!!) with another moai or two looking on.
Tomorrow we leave for Santiago for the night and then get a long distance bus to La Serena, an old colonial town in Northern Chile where we'll be for four days, and where we'll hopefully get to see the penguin colony!!!
We are having a great time - getting quite used to our nightly bottle of wonderfully cheap Chilean red wine looking at the stars above - quite different from what we're used to seeing.
As they say here, "Ciao" for now.
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