RAPA NUI - ISLA DE PASCUA

THURSDAY 9th JUNE

  Met Paul at breakfast this morning, he's the chap who was delayed in arriving from Santiago yesterday until 1.00am.  He's in his early 30's works in marketing in China and has taken a 12 month sabbatical to travel around the world.  He expressed willingness to share the cost of a car and explore the island together.  The car hire man turned up at about 9.45am saying I hadn't phoned him last night after speaking to Paul to confirm the hire of the car.  I told him as Paul hadn't arrived until after 1.00am and I hadn't seen him until this morning, that hadn't been feasable.  Anyway I cannot remember any such arrangement being made.  We hired the car and et off for the far reaches of the island.  Apparently the Europeans discovered the island they landed on it on Easter Sunday, hence the name.  The moai statues, of which there 887 when on the island were carved by the Polynesians between 1250 -1500.  The larget weighs some 86 tons! They face inland and represent deified leaders and chiefs.  At the first site we stopped at, Anakena, cows were grazing under the palm trees.  In an amazing feat

of transportation over half of the statues were moved from the main rock quarry at Rano Raraku to various parts of the island.  Sadly despite optimistic forecasts from the locals the weather did not clear, but got progessively worse.  We carried on around the coast and came to Papa Vaka and the stone carvings.

Below is the tallest moai, Paro some 10m tall and weighing some 82 tons, which was toppled face downards.  The toppling started as a result of conflict between tribes on the island commencing in 1722.  By 1868 there wasn't an upright statue left on the island!

  Cuting down southwards we drove towards Rano Raraku whih is one of the national parks and you have to pay $60 US per person to visit.  We mutually agreed that in view of the weather conditions we would give it a miss and carry on along the southern coast road.  Unusually with all the moai, we came across a shrine to Our Lady with baby Jesus in her arms.

 At the point where the road curves around to follow the southern coast, lies the Tongariki site with a large array of moai, 15 in all.  They were destroyed by a huge tidal wave in 1960, but have since been restored.

 Further down the coast there were spots with a wonderful array of blues as the sea exerted its force on the shore.

A bit further down the coast I made a closer acquaintance with a solitary moai.  Amazingly at this point it had briefly stopped raining!

Eventually we returned to Hanga Roa and observed the horses roaming around the sea shore as well as the waves continuing to batter the shore line.

We were in time to catch a late lunch at one of the restaurants and sample a beer before going off to look for postcards.  So keep a look out in the post in about a week's time, Nick, Shauna, James and Leia, there might be something coming your way!

Paul and I went out to dinner about 8.30pm and had our first Pisco Sours - in fact a couple each, before going on to sample the local beers.  We both had local fish mine done with cocanut and tandoori sauce along with "Smushed sweet potato".  It was all really excellent.  Paul got me to chose my top ten all time songs.  A very pleasant evening and a fine end to an interesting day.