somehow ended up in business class on the flight out to easter island-row 1! which is a fair effort for a bloke who always seems to find himself in the back 5 rows of any plane he is travelling on. so enjoyed that!, spent a lot of time playing with my seat controls to the amusement of the old lady next to me.
easter island is known for a few things, mainly being the most remote piece of land on the earths surface and moais: stone sculptures representing the human ancestors of the inhabitants of the island. these were erected facing the village with the belief that the ancestors were then looking over the tribe. these are all over the island, all ridiculously heavy and some a very long way from the quarry and must have taken years to move to their final location. they had a big tribal war a few hundred years down and pulled them all down, and that was pretty much that until they gradually started to be restored in the last 50 years.
it is not the cheapest location i have been to this year, but it is just one of those places and is definetly a must visit.
hired a bike the first day and had a very solid 40km day on some interesting roads. headed up to rano kau-big crater of an extinct old volcano. very cool. right on the end of the crater, on a 300m cliff between it and the sea is orongo; from where the birdman competitions were held back in the day. basically the first guy to get back to the top of the cliff with an unbroken egg having first climbed down the cliff, swam out to a nearby island, find the first sooty tern egg of the season, swim back and climbed back up. all the time pushing/fighting with all the other competitors won and he or his nominated person was birdman for the year. if you won you were then big dog in your tribe, if you lost and hadnt been killed during the race your tribe apparently ostrasised you; for the rest of your natural life. high stakes!
flew back down the hill and did think to myself a coupla times that i would not be a well man if i fell off. hadnt ridden a bike since july and had forgotten how much speed you can pick up in a short time on an agreeable gradient. then cycled up the west coast for a while before following the road inland and checking out a few places; restored moai platforms, underground houses and gardens etc before checking out some moais for sunset and going off to watch kevin costners easter island movie 'rapa nui'.
jumped on a tour the second day which was probably overpriced but was also good and gave me the opportunity to ask some poor person all my questions. the tour went up the east coast from the main town and took in most of the best sites on the island, including the mountain they quarried all the moai out of, ahu tongariki-the biggest platform and anakena-the best beach on the island.
jumped on a bike on my last day and went out to the beach for the day as had pretty much seen everything i wanted to see
so yeah very cool place. the main sites can be seen in a couple of full days and i reckon everyone should get over here sometime. well cool.
back to normal on the return flight to santiago: seated in row 39 of 40.
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