Here are some of the first images as we approached and explored Easter Island on Wednesday. It was exciting to see some land after flying over open water for five hours! It was hot and humid here when we landed and, nearly the total opposite of being in Antarctic waters a few days ago. The temperature was nearly 80 degrees with a humidity level to match. It seems impossible to be sitting out in the middle of this giant Pacific Ocean on this small bit of land, thousands of miles from everywhere, and be able to write these thoughts to you and in a few minutes have them beaming out to anyone who looks at my blog.
Our hotel is very unique and I will post some more photos of it very soon. Each room is in a separate kind of bungalow, with a large king bed (in my case) built up on a platform in a large room with a high vaulted ceiling that has a continuously running ceiling fan to help keep things cool. The furniture and surroundings are simple and stylistically basic. My shower is unique in that it is outside, and when I open the locked door to go into it, I can look up and see the sky. There is a privacy fence around it, and it is a fun and very exhilarating way to shower! The water tank is on the roof, and it is heated by solar panels, and gravity does the rest. We have a breakfast buffet here each morning, and the lunch and dinner are eaten out, all provided by the tour company. Our local guide is much fun and tells many stories to us as we travel about and as we eat together. Tonight he and his wife are inviting all of us to his home where we will have dinner. Later in the evening we will all go to a Polynesian dance program that should be fun and colorful.
The first Moai we saw were some of the oldest ones here, and thus looking a bit more worn than the web image I posted earlier. We will see those as well sometime within the next two days, and I will find their successive variations interesting and exciting. They are massive in size and scope and it boggles my mind to visualize them being carved in a volcanic quarry near here, and then moved by hand into place and positioned where they were. Those you you see in the photos were excavated from where they were and placed on the altar platforms where they have stood for many decades. All of the Moai statues face inward towards the land, to the people they represent and to the land which created them.
We have frequent showers here in this tropical climate, but they do not last long, and as our guide says we just look to the other sides of the island, most of which are visible, and we just go there instead. We did so yesterday as the large altar we were heading for became enveloped in rain, so we just turned around and went a few miles in the opposite direction to the site you see illustrated here.
There are wild horses here that just run around like they own the place, and in a sense they do, for no one actually owns them! A small herd of ten or so galloped through the area where these statues were and it was fun to see them do so. There are also free range chickens that go where they want, and begin to crow in the early morning (the roosters at least) so I have a built in alarm clock!
The landscape, the town, the buildings, and the cultural pace of this area reminds me so very much of the rural areas of Hawaii I have seen, away from the tourist cities, and exhibiting a more basic and mellow life style. The buildings are fabricated simply with materials from here, and often appear to be not yet quite finished. There is much use of plywood, concrete blocks, and logs and poles for support and decorations. Many homes have their own smaller Moai statues just for decorative purposes, and there are gorgeous and colorful flowers everywhere. There is a banana tree growing right outside my sliding door/window that has about 50 bananas on it at the moment slowly getting ripe.
So today (Thursday) we will have breakfast here, and then about 9:30, our guide Elmundo will pick us up in the mini bus and we will be on our way to adventures, that I hope i can post here before I leave. It is now about time for the first light of dawn in the sky, which of course I will try to photograph if I can.
