Arrive on Easter Island

We arrived on Easter Island 2 days ago, into a glorious morning, but after a 5 hour flight beginiing at 3am. Easter Island seems to have 2 settings: Blistering heat that will literally scald the skin off of you, and Monsoon rain that will soak you in a matter of seconds. Day 1: Scalding. Not a scrap of shade anywhere. Sunburned every inch of skin. Day 2: Monsoon. Much more pleasant. Soaked through, mudcaked, sweaty, better. Day 3: Scalding again.
Anyway, Easter Island is actually amazing. The first day we went and had a first look at the Moai statues around the west coast of the island. Theyçre really bigger than I thought and look so impressive hewn out of their black volcanic rock and silhouetted against cobalt blue of sea and sky. There are waves crashing all around too, and a good sea breeze which deceives as to the intense heat from the sun, which levels its unblinking glare over the island on Blistering days from around 8am to 8pm.
Yesterday we attempted to recover from the 3am flight sleepiness and sunburn and weariness, and also had to stay in one place a bit because I am already suffering from one of the plagues of travel in south America = travelers stomach.
Its an incredible alchemy which causes anything and everything I consume to be transformed into pond water with a fearsome rapdity. So yeah, yesterday was largely spent lying weak and exhausted trying to get some strength back and stay out of the weather = monsoon day. I managed to eat some dry bread and spaghetti. Victory. At 5pm the sky cleared a little so we decideed to attempt the trek to the top of Ranu Kau volcano and Orongo, the birdman ceremony village.
We did manage to make the top after a couple of hours steep uphilling, and amazingly, it was actually worth feeling like I was going to black out every 3rd step.
You get to the top of the hill, and right over the crest are straight away looking down into the crater of Ranu Kau. Its an astonishing sight. The island is made up of 3 long extinct volcanoes, and this is one, so the opposite side of the volcano from the one we scaled is a sheer drop straight into the pacific. And thats where Orongo village is situated. Orongo is where the chief of the island would be decided for the year, with each tribe putting forth a champion who had to swim out to tiny rock islands just off the coast and bring back intact the first egg of the Sooty Tern, which make their nests there. You can see the little buildings where tribe leaders lived during the ceremonies, they look a bit like eco=housing, stone walled and covered in turf roofs. Also the view from the rim of the volcano are pretty impressive, looking back down over the island in one direction and straight out over unbroken ocean horizon in the other, you could understand why the islanders worshiped birds as messengers of the gods, there being no land in sight in any direction, when birds do appear in the sky, itçs as if they descended straight from the heavens.
All very spectacular, and pictures dont do it any justice, however I will upload them when I return.
Ill leave it there just now, and update later hopefully having seen some of the Tapati festival which is taking place at the moment.

Apologies for the grammar in here. Spanish keyboard wants to make this Ç instead of apostrophes and stuff.

xo