Easter Island is roughly five hours flight over the ocean, but it did not feel that remote. Two Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes land every day. There is a free wifi spot on the square and near the football pitch and in stores almost everything is available. Although the selection is not vast and prices are way more expensive.
The island has only one town with about 6,000 inhabitants. A rugby tournament (teams of Rapa Nui, Tahiti and Chile) was held when we were there on the football pitch converted for the occasion so we saw all people on the island :). It’s a small island – the greatest distance across is less than 20 miles. The moai statues, or their remains are scattered everywhere. Most are just lying rocks, because all the statues were once toppled by islanders. Only few were rebuilt.
Few facts:
- The island is more than 3,600 kilometers west of Chile.
- 6,000 permanent residents are in one town of Hanga Roa, elsewhere there is no electricity or water.
- Overall, there are 887 moai statues in various stages of production and decomposition on the island.
- All the moai are facing inland, because they are the ancestors, who looking after a village.
- The time difference to British Isles is 5 hours.
We spent ten days on the island, so we had enough time. We managed to explore most of the island by hitchhiking and walking, only the last day we rented a moped for the Hells Angels feeling.
10km from town is the stunning Anakena beach with a couple of moai statues. Twice we got completely sun burned there, no matter the 50 suncream.
In the camp was also a lot of Chilean tourists – they like to drink and enjoy sharing their wine or pisco – mixed with coke to piscola. Two mornings were lost recovering from the dance of wine and pisco!
Easter Island is a very photogenic place, great work guys, some very nice pics 🙂
One question: Could the photos fill the screen more, or is that because of the WordPress page style or something?
Yes, we’ve noticed that, though did not have time to investigate if we could make it show big pictures on default.
However, you can see full size pictures at the moment – when viewing the picture you can scroll down and on the right hand size is “view full size”, it will open that picture in new window full size. Bit painful, hopefully we’ll figure out how to make them full size!