Easter Island, Part One...

Alright, I'm really really sorry that it took me this long to post this, but I feel like I have a million things to write about the trip and every time I sit down to do it I end up typing for over an hour without having completed a day's worth of descriptions! However, I have finished the first tew days, so I'll post them here. I'll put each day as a separate post, just so it's easier to read, because some of them are pretty long. With that, here's ...


DAY ONE
The amount of excitement we were feeling the night before our trip is difficult to describe; we were eagerly packing and re-packing our giant backpacks, discussing via emails sent every few minutes late-breaking adjustments into the early hours of the mroning and fretting over the discovery of the fact that Rapa Nui is home to a sizeable population of scorpions and black widows. When we finally made it to sleep that night, several hours later than our initial goal, visions of moai danced in our heads. Even though neither of us are morning people by any stretch of the imagination, we were both glad that our plane left at 8:30 in the morning. When you take into account the two hour time difference, which placed us on the island in mid-afternoon, we would have plenty of time to take advantage of our part-day and find a good camping spot.

The flight over was long -6 hours- but exhaustion from the previous night’s lack of sleep quickly wooed us into a classically useless trans-flight-nap. By some stroke of incredible luck, I happened to glance down at the ocean below us just as we were passing over the Islas de Juan Fernandez, otherwise known as the Robinson Crusoe Islands, which apparently is nearly deserted save a few fishermen who live there in limited contact with the outside world and monthly freight trips bringing food and supplies. We felt pretty fortunate to happen to see the islands, because they were only truly visible for a few seconds of our long flight.

Since we still had no idea where we were going to stay upon arrival, we paused to investigate the long counter of hostel representatives at the airport. That turned out to be a bad idea; one of the main cultural differences I’ve noticed here is that people are very tenacious about putting pressure on anyone who may be a prospective customer. Walking past restaurants (not just on Easter Island, anywhere in Chile) people will come approach you on the street and try to usher you into their establishment, and these hostel representatives were equally persistent in pressing us. They were nearly arguing with each other about whose facilities were better as they fought over us, and everyone insisted that there is absolutely no place on the island aside from the parcels of land they rented in their yards where you could pitch a tent. Since we had read in numerous other places that you can camp “unofficially” and for free anywhere on the island, I left the counter of hostels and approached the official tourism desk. Unfortunately, it became quickly obvious that the two women working in this desk had a close affiliation with one of the hostels, as the only thing they would tell me was to go to there and to no one else. They even told me it’s very dangerous, both to your person and to your gear, to camp anywhere on the island outside of the town. This proved to be about as far from the truth as humanly possible, and I’m glad we didn’t pay much attention to them.

We got pretty frustrated with feeling like we were getting inaccurate information and being pressured into making a decision immediately, so we just put our backpacks on and left. Without any plan, completely charged with excitement and blessed with a fresh, sunny afternoon we started out walking into town and trying to decide what we should do next. We hadn’t known while in Santiago if we would be able to build fires on the island or not, and we hadn’t brought anything at all to cook with, so we were a little unsure how we were going to have fresh water or food. We’d brought a few things to eat –cereal, pickles, nuts, canned tuna (although we didn’t have a can opener), and some other assorted ready-to-eat foods, but certainly not enough to last us the entire 6 days.

Luckily the atmosphere of the town was very friendly and welcoming; every person we saw said hello or even tried to strike up a conversation, and it felt completely safe to ask people for advice or directions. We’d read in all of our research that the people are very nice, absolutely no crime exists on the island, you don’t even have to try and hitchhike people just offer you rides, and you can pretty well trust everyone you meet. We very soon learned how true all of that was.

As we were walking alongside the road, a pickup slowed down next to us and asked what we were looking for. Feeling pretty comfortable with the safety of our situation, I honestly answered “I don’t know.” We explained that we were looking for a place to camp but didn’t know how to go about finding one, and the driver (who introduced himself as Napohe) told us to hop in and he’d take us to a perfect place. We threw our backpacks in the bed and jumped in the cab, eager to have a bit of knowledgeable help. Napohe drove us just a little ways out of town to a beautiful cave right on the water’s edge, surrounded by ahu and standing moai. It was almost too good to believe; here we were on Easter Island with a friendly local, an amazing and picturesque camping spot, awesome weather…what more could we ask for?

After showing us the spot, Napohe offered to take us back to his house and fill some bottles of water before leaving us there to camp. Realizing that was a pretty important part of camping success, we took him up on the offer, and got back in the pickup to head to his house. There, he not only offered us several giant bottles of water, but also fresh papaya, avocado, pineapple and lemons from his garden. As we filled the water bottles, he made the suggestion that we could spend our first night camping in his yard, if we wanted to, because then we could use the kitchen and bathroom as well. Even though we were pretty excited about the idea of camping, we figured we’d better take advantage of the opportunity to cook and have running water while we could. We also thought we could probably get some good advice regarding exploring the island if we talked to him a bit more, so we decided to stay there that night. In addition to his own house, Napohe also has two or three “cabanas” surrounding his home that he rents out to tourists. One of them he’s renting out for a year to an American woman and her husband who are apparently on a year-long vacation. The other two were empty when we arrived. He told us that he had to go finish some things at work, but we were welcome to leave all of our camping gear in one of the cabanas, and use the kitchen and bathroom and whatever else we needed. He suggested we explore a little bit around Hanga Roa that afternoon, and then that evening we could all make dinner together. He took off and so did we, after eating the fresh pineapple and rejoicing in our good luck.

We spent the afternoon exploring the city, bought some bread to eat with our freshly picked avocado, and watched the locals surfing. When we returned to the house several hours later, exhausted and overwhelmed by our good luck and disbelief that we were actually on Easter Island.

That night we made dinner with Napohe, and even though we’re not exactly sure how it ended up happening we never set up our tent and he never even acted like that was the idea. We spent the night in the guest cabana, which KellyAnne found a price list for and discovered it usually costs $40/night per person. Before going to bed we sat around for quite a while chatting, listening to bits and pieces of his life story. Apparently when he was in his 20’s, he married an American woman in her 40’s who worked for NASA and came to visit Easter Island. He moved to the US and lived in San Jose for 8 years where they had a daughter, and he traveled around enjoying life and not working because she didn't want him to. Eventually he decided that he didn’t enjoy a life with people who were so focused on money, and he wanted to work, so he divorced her and moved back to Easter Island, where he’s been ever since. Now, he owns a graphic design company making textiles with ethnic designs to sell to tourists. His house was completely decorated with his work, and during our time on the island we saw lots of his work for sale in shops.

That night we went to bed more excited than either of us had been since coming to Chile; we felt like we’d met an incredibly cool, friendly and interesting person.