Settling in to RAPA NUI aka Easter Island

DAY 2 - SAT OCT 11 - RAPA NUI (EASTER ISLAND) - CHILE

Trying to decide if getting here was worth it. 4 flights - got up at 3am on Oct 10, flight 1st one was to Calgary, 2nd to Atlanta, Georgia, 3rd to Santiago, Chile - 4th to Rapa Nui aka as Easter Island. Met a great kid on my first flight - pretty sure he will be friends with Jado down the road. By the time I got to Santiago, we were over an hour late to arrive - my name was being called over every intercom. They had rescheduled me for a later flight. Really? at this point it was 9am on Oct 11 with another 5 hour flight to go. I walked up to the gate in time for my original flight but they denied me. My last flight I was stuck in the middle seat of the middle section, and the woman beside me was leaning into my middle seat the entire time with her jacket and her arm and her back. Excellent last flight.

Eventually I made it to Rapa Nui - staying downtown in a place called HANGA ROA. My AirBNB is right by the ocean. I settled in - I had purposely booked a few starter days to get my bearings, do some work, and try to RE-learn blogging which has completely escaped me. Not to mention, it does not work very well with spotty internet.

I spent over 3 hours trying to figure out my phone plan - which was not working. I almost couldn’t figure out where my AirBnB was due to lack of internet.

The first night, I realized that staying downtown Hanga Roa may have been a younger person’s better idea. The night club pounds out the bass tunes until 2am, at which point the drunk tenants saunter home and carry on as if they were still in the club - until 3:30am. Loving this no 2 schedule I am starting this trip on.

DAY 3 - SUN OCT 12 - RAPA NUI (EASTER ISLAND) - CHILE

I had intentionally set today as a ‘stay-at-home’ acclimate to travel type day. I went to make coffee in the morning and met 3 ladies from Santiago who asked me to join them for breakfast. Cecelia, her sister Gina, and daughter Gabi. We used the translator app to chat, such nice ladies. They offered me crackers with fresh avacado grown right here on Easter Island. Gabi is a dentist in Santiago.

I spent the day trying to figure out blogging. As well, helped my kids sell Jorg’s car over whatsapp video. She will drive my car until I am home at Christmas. She is wanting to go to YWAM, so needs the money. First person who came buy, bought it. YAY!

I had used the kitchen my first night.. walked to a local small market type store - bought a small pack hamburger, a pack of noodles, one onion, one small pack tomato sauce, an iced tea, and 2 local candies. I had made enough to last a couple of days.. so today I ate that as leftovers. Spent time trying to remember how to blog… seems I cannot remember how and it is taking forever lol.

My right leg has given me grief for 10+ years now, and it has been acting up since I got here. My right hip, leg and knee in so much pain especially at night. Hoping this is a temperature acclimation and this doesn’t last.

I really enjoyed doing not much today. As I had said, I knew I would need a day like this before the crazy starts.

DAY 4 - MON OCT 13 - RAPA NUI (EASTER ISLAND) - CHILE

I was picked up close to my AirBnB - the van was already almost full. We picked up a few more and embarked on the road. What an incredible day it turned out to be WOW.

The tour I chose was the perfect one for this island. We covered the entire island. At our first stop, I thought I would mention to my guide that I had met someone from Easter Island last year in the Phillipines. So many things transpired from here, but bottom line is that the girl I had friended in the Phillipines is ‘family’ with my tour guide. She was able to show me my friend’s house and her work place, we even saw her father walking down the street. I will see my friend on Thursday in Santiago where she is this week. It really just shows how small this place is.

This tour was educational and I learned how much these people value their rich culture. They are holding on to it tight - they do not want to lose the RAPA NUI culture. The 10K+ Moai statues stand everywhere as a reminder of this. Many of these statues have been knocked down over the years in an effort to destroy the people. They are resiliant.

The tour was beautiful, I hung out with Tyler and Laura from Kansas City (they live 5 min away from Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift haha… 5 min from where they got engaged and have seen them around their local grocery stores and walk their dogs in the same area.. funny), Clause from Austria who is a Hell’s Angel out there. He explained to me that there is is all about family values, a more prestigious club to be a part of with no violence, and all drugs are illegal. and our guide Hiva - a friend of my friend Annia. I also met and hit it off with 2 sisters who just moved back from New York. They were raised on Easter Island with no hydro, no running water - and their mother moved them to New York when they were 9 and 12 years old, speaking no English. Today they are 22 and 25 years old and just moved back 2 months ago. They each inherited a farm. One has horses, the other has cows. They can see eachothers homes from their own. Since they are from here originally, both of their boyfriends are related to them - which is the way it is here. They are bombshells - gorgeous girls, now farmers on Easter Island. WILD, just wild.

Grateful for a full, engaging day here. Outstanding beauty in every direction. It reminds me of Hawaii, which stands to reason as they are both Polynesian Islands.

DAY 5 - TUES OCT 14 - RAPA NUI (EASTER ISLAND)

Today was another intentional quiet day. Grand Palms work, and try to figure out this blog thing.. I am getting closer, I think I may have it. I took tylenol to go to sleep last night, and oddly my leg feels much better today. I woke up to 2 huge cuckaracha in my bedroom this morning (Spanish for 2 cockroaches). I bravely took some toilet paper and picked up the squirmy clingy cuckarachas and flung them outsite. Yes, I did.

I had a few calls today, and worked. Went for a walk uptown to order a fresh shrimp salad, it was quite good.

RECAP - RAPA NUI aka ISLA DE PASCUA aka EASTER ISLAND

RAPA NUI is the name of this island. It is 15 miles wide and 8 miles long. It takes one hour to drive around the entire island. Population under 10K - 40% are native to the island, 60% can speak RAPA NUI. This language originated in SouthEast Asia. This island is a 6-hour flight from mainland Chile - imagine!! But belongs to Chile. Tho ask a local, and they are quick to tell you they identify as a Rapa Nui, NOT a Chilean. The locals are proud to live here and are peaceful, happy people. They live their lives on this small island.

At one point, there were only 110 Rapa Nui people left alive. They started to reproduce so they wouldn’t lose their culture. For this reason, almost every person this island is related. Every person I met was dating or married to their cousin or uncle.

Rapa Nui is known for their MOAI statues. They carved these roughly between 1100-1600 to represent ancestors, placing them on platforms called AHU. These statues were carved from volcanic rock using stone and wooden tools. Each statue weighs several tons and reach up to 10 meters tall. This was a spiritual excercise to capture the spirit of their ancestors - who would protect their communities. There were many rules.. they had to be carved at the top of the mountain itself, and brought down with wooden rollers and ropes. Each Moai took 1 1/2 years to create, and a few months to bring down from the mountain top - effectively 2 years per Moai, and approximately 15 workers full time. The transporting of these to an AHU is considered a remarkable feat of engineering and I could not wrap my head around this. How these people accomplished this was incredible.

There are over 1000 Moai on Easter Island, they always must face away from the ocean as they are watching over the people for protection. They no longer have gems in their eyes so they are all blind, without their souls, and no longer looking anywhere at the moment.

The people of Rapa Nui were distinctly categorized by royalty and the tribes of slavery. At that time, there were 12 tribes of slaves. A moai of a royal would be complete when they eye sockets were carved out and gem stones placed into the sockets to keep their soul alive. These gems were considered to give their ancestor the ability to see them and protect them as their soul would be considered alive. The slaves ended up making moai statues of their own leaders - which now sits at a place called Tangariki. There are 14 of the 22 left standing after tsunami destruction. These moai were never given the gems in the eye sockets, as they were not royalty.

Easter Island is closer to Tahiti than it is Chile. Tahiti is under 6 hours for a direct flight, but there is none available. Hiva is traveling to Tahiti in the next few months and she must fly to Santiago - Los Angeles - another stop I am forgetting - and then Tahiti. This island is isolating, as almost every place you want to go stops first in Santiago, then out from there - multiple expensive stops.

It is fairly expensive here, since there is nothing here. People buy their clothing online. An Amazon order takes 2 months to arrive. Food arrives here mostly by air, some by boat. The food here was great!

I would be remiss not to mention the dogs and roosters. OMG. The people here love puppies, but they don’t like the grown dogs. They also do not believe in small dogs. As a result, this island has 1000’s of stray dogs. They are lying in doorways, and fields, and anywhere you can think of. They are mild-mannered and very chill dogs. Except a few that I witnessed… one dog chasing a truck with dogs in the box - they were trying to fight but the truck kept driving. The dog chasing kept running and trying to jump up the truck to fight and the ones in the box reaching down. It was insanely loud and quite scary. And the one huge black and brown dog with massive fangs that ran after me as I was walking down the small path from my airbnb to the main street. He jumped a huge fence and ran after me barking so loud, I repeatedly screamed, ‘Get away!’ and finally he stopped. I definitely had flashes of me in a Chilean hospital. The dogs here bark NON-STOP and nobody asks them to quiet down… one starts, and it propels a choir of many. Rooster are much the same, everywhere, and crowing at all hours of the day and night.

The bugs have been less than I expected. People leave their doors and windows open, no screens. The only thing is if I leave my legs exposed with shorts and sit outside, they must be tiny little things but my legs feel like they have 1000 tiny bites but I cannot see those little guys.

The people here are kind, and live a simple life. They fish, they get involved in tourism, they farm a few things - and live with internet service only on one part of the island.

I was greeted with a beautiful live flower lei. I was offered food and drink. I was offered a place to stay free any time I want to come back. I would consider this a beautiful, hospitable place.

I leave here feeling like I know enough people here, to be connected to ANYONE on this island. It would be so easy to move here and plug in immediately - which I would not do. But they are kind and welcoming.

I rate RAPA NUI 7/10 - the people are kind and wonderful, the beauty of this place is next level… but for me, this island is too isolating and too chill. I need accessibility to bring it to a higher rating. Additionally, the incessant dog barking and constant rooster cock-a-doodle-doing is enough to drive me around the bend.

No idea what happened but somehow this post deleted the rest of what I wrote including all photos so I will not rewrite it, I will repost with the photos and leave this post as is.