Home Sweet Campsite.
A long way from anywhere.
Walking in the sun.
Picture perfect views.
Fishing.
Moai.
Local tuna.
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Easter Island and Tapati Festival set 1
Arrival, 8:30am
Home Sweet Campsite.
A long way from anywhere.
Walking in the sun.
Picture perfect views.
Fishing.
Moai.
Local tuna.
Home Sweet Campsite.
A long way from anywhere.
Walking in the sun.
Picture perfect views.
Fishing.
Moai.
Local tuna.
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
Easter Island - a serious note.
All the sunshine and seaside and giant stone heads aside, it´s not possible to ignore that there is a darker side to the expanding tourism on Easter Island. Numbers of visitors to the island have increased enormously year on year for the last few years, thouygh luckily it is still mostly resort free with accommodations being mostly guesthouses run by locals. However, with the increasing numbers wanting to stay on the island, this may be changing.
Just opposite our sweet coast side campsite there is a huge unfinished hotel complex, Hanga Roa Hotel. It´s windows are covered in slogans written in white paint, the largest ad most predominant of which reads "This land was stolen from the people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)."
Sadly, very little of the land outside of Hanga Roa (the only town on the island) is actually owned by the islanders. The rest is claimed by the Chilean government, as Easter Island is considered part of Chile, though it is nearly 4000km to the West across the Pacific. An article here explains the situation in more detail.
It seems unjustifiable and violent action is being taken against people who have lived on this land for generations, and I would urge any visitors to the island to carefully consider their accommodations and tour companies and not to support any business which is illegally taking land from locals and is having a bad environmental impact on the island.
Very glad to have stayed in our little locally run campsite this last week, despite being eaten alive by ants.
A link to Camping Mihinoa for future travellers.
Just opposite our sweet coast side campsite there is a huge unfinished hotel complex, Hanga Roa Hotel. It´s windows are covered in slogans written in white paint, the largest ad most predominant of which reads "This land was stolen from the people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)."
Sadly, very little of the land outside of Hanga Roa (the only town on the island) is actually owned by the islanders. The rest is claimed by the Chilean government, as Easter Island is considered part of Chile, though it is nearly 4000km to the West across the Pacific. An article here explains the situation in more detail.
It seems unjustifiable and violent action is being taken against people who have lived on this land for generations, and I would urge any visitors to the island to carefully consider their accommodations and tour companies and not to support any business which is illegally taking land from locals and is having a bad environmental impact on the island.
Very glad to have stayed in our little locally run campsite this last week, despite being eaten alive by ants.
A link to Camping Mihinoa for future travellers.
Monday, 7 February 2011
A few days on Easter Island
So, we went to see the triathlon up in the crater of extinct volcano Rano Raraku (it´s all volcanoes here you know). Very picturesque up there. Inside the crater is a rainwater lake with thickets of reeds lining the outside, which are used to build the reed boats for the triathlon. Herds of wild horses stampede around the rim sending up clouds of red dust and a few unfinished Moai statues peer over the lake from the opposite side. A lot of local people as well as tourists gathered to watch the events.
The triathlon begins with the contestants rowing their reed boats across the lake. here the pick up 20 kilos of bananas each and run with them half way round the lake again, back to their starting point where they enter the water and swim back across the lake. All pretty impressive. I was glad I was sat under a tree watching and not running around with bananas.
The next day we rented ourselves a shakey little 4 by 4 and rattled our way over to the base of Maunga Terevaka, the highest point on the island (507m). We had a look around some lava caves at foot of the volcano and then set off up the slopes. It took us about an hour and a half of sweaty hiking to get to the top, but once there the views were well worth it. It´s very quiet and windswept at the top with only the hunting hawks for company. You get an almost unbroken 360 degree view of the pacific horizon, which feels quite surreal and made it feel really like we are very far away from anything in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Reminded me of those old maps where "Here Be Monsters" is written in all the corners.
Having made shorter work of the way down (despite getting a little lost), we bumped our way over the largely unpaved roads to Anakena beach on the north coast of the island. It´s a gorgeous white sand beach with clear turquoise waters and wild horses roaming around it, though not enough palm trees under the midday glare. Very lovely. The water was wonderful and warm, but then the rain came in all tropical downpour, so we escaped back to base camp.
Later in the day we returned to Rano Raraku to see the sight known, eerily, as "The Nursery". This is where the Moai statues where carved straight out of the dark volcanic rock from the volcano´s flanks. There are dozens of them, some toppled in various directions looking as if they´re whispering to one another, some in varying stages of completion, some of them just barely discernible in the rock. One of them is 21 metres long, but is still very much attached to the rocks. I guess that would have been quite a feat to get that one all carved out and across the island. It would have been much larger than most of the others.
Today we got up early and went rattling across the island in our tinny car, chasing the sunrise at Ahu Tongariki. The sun comes up directly behind a row of 15 Moai statues, and as the site is close to the Nursery, we also got a good view back at the volcano in the morning light. Later, we walked down to a sea cave and I read my Hemingway for a while. And so the days go on Easter Island.
With only one last day to go here, I have to say I will miss it (though I´m gonna be happy to be back in a normal bed and not living in a tent!). The scenery is spectacular, black rocks, white crashing waves, huge skies, extinct volcanoes, sea caves, rock carvings and Moai statues on almost every stretch of coastline, and, at sunset, the sun sinking slowly beneath the horizon and the clouds sailing on out to sea, great galleons into the night.
I´ll try and get the pictures uploaded soon as I´m back at Alex´s flat. 200 photos of Easter Island heads. Yeah!
xo
The triathlon begins with the contestants rowing their reed boats across the lake. here the pick up 20 kilos of bananas each and run with them half way round the lake again, back to their starting point where they enter the water and swim back across the lake. All pretty impressive. I was glad I was sat under a tree watching and not running around with bananas.
The next day we rented ourselves a shakey little 4 by 4 and rattled our way over to the base of Maunga Terevaka, the highest point on the island (507m). We had a look around some lava caves at foot of the volcano and then set off up the slopes. It took us about an hour and a half of sweaty hiking to get to the top, but once there the views were well worth it. It´s very quiet and windswept at the top with only the hunting hawks for company. You get an almost unbroken 360 degree view of the pacific horizon, which feels quite surreal and made it feel really like we are very far away from anything in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Reminded me of those old maps where "Here Be Monsters" is written in all the corners.
Having made shorter work of the way down (despite getting a little lost), we bumped our way over the largely unpaved roads to Anakena beach on the north coast of the island. It´s a gorgeous white sand beach with clear turquoise waters and wild horses roaming around it, though not enough palm trees under the midday glare. Very lovely. The water was wonderful and warm, but then the rain came in all tropical downpour, so we escaped back to base camp.
Later in the day we returned to Rano Raraku to see the sight known, eerily, as "The Nursery". This is where the Moai statues where carved straight out of the dark volcanic rock from the volcano´s flanks. There are dozens of them, some toppled in various directions looking as if they´re whispering to one another, some in varying stages of completion, some of them just barely discernible in the rock. One of them is 21 metres long, but is still very much attached to the rocks. I guess that would have been quite a feat to get that one all carved out and across the island. It would have been much larger than most of the others.
Today we got up early and went rattling across the island in our tinny car, chasing the sunrise at Ahu Tongariki. The sun comes up directly behind a row of 15 Moai statues, and as the site is close to the Nursery, we also got a good view back at the volcano in the morning light. Later, we walked down to a sea cave and I read my Hemingway for a while. And so the days go on Easter Island.
With only one last day to go here, I have to say I will miss it (though I´m gonna be happy to be back in a normal bed and not living in a tent!). The scenery is spectacular, black rocks, white crashing waves, huge skies, extinct volcanoes, sea caves, rock carvings and Moai statues on almost every stretch of coastline, and, at sunset, the sun sinking slowly beneath the horizon and the clouds sailing on out to sea, great galleons into the night.
I´ll try and get the pictures uploaded soon as I´m back at Alex´s flat. 200 photos of Easter Island heads. Yeah!
xo
Saturday, 5 February 2011
Killing time before the triathlon on Easter Island
So I´m just updating to say I´ve seen more movies in the last week than I have in 6 months in london. Free aeroplane movies = win!
I watched Somewhere, the new Sofia Copolla one, in Lima with Alex. thought it was pretty good. Wasn´t quite sure why. Lots of long shots of cars driving about and a geezer looking a bit bored, but somehow she made up for it with something that felt really genuine in the relationship between the main character and his daughter. Parts of the movie really had a fresh feeling about them that I thought made up for the slight tedium of other scenes, and anyway, everything can´t be Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides.
On the plane over from Easter Island, on our wonderful 3am flight (erk!!) I made the bad mistake of indulging my curiosity about what movies they might have. I found Megamind on there, which I´ve been wanting to see and so there waved goodbye to any chance of sleep on the flight. The movie was really great though! Much win! Loved the characters, the plot, and some of the dialogue was pretty great too. Loved the scene where Megamind and Metroman taunt each other about who should win out, Good versus Evil:
"But Revenge is a dish best served cold."
"Yes, but it´s easily re-heated in the microwave of evil!"
Ha, well I can´t remember much of it, but parts made me laugh out loud, which is quite embarassing on a plane full of snoozy people.
Yay though!
I might even watch it again on the way back.
Right, I´m off to eat a delicious breakfast of dry soda crackers and Gatorade. Thankyou South American stomach bug from hell. At least I get to eat it in the sunshine with a rolling ocean view :)
xoxo
I watched Somewhere, the new Sofia Copolla one, in Lima with Alex. thought it was pretty good. Wasn´t quite sure why. Lots of long shots of cars driving about and a geezer looking a bit bored, but somehow she made up for it with something that felt really genuine in the relationship between the main character and his daughter. Parts of the movie really had a fresh feeling about them that I thought made up for the slight tedium of other scenes, and anyway, everything can´t be Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides.
On the plane over from Easter Island, on our wonderful 3am flight (erk!!) I made the bad mistake of indulging my curiosity about what movies they might have. I found Megamind on there, which I´ve been wanting to see and so there waved goodbye to any chance of sleep on the flight. The movie was really great though! Much win! Loved the characters, the plot, and some of the dialogue was pretty great too. Loved the scene where Megamind and Metroman taunt each other about who should win out, Good versus Evil:
"But Revenge is a dish best served cold."
"Yes, but it´s easily re-heated in the microwave of evil!"
Ha, well I can´t remember much of it, but parts made me laugh out loud, which is quite embarassing on a plane full of snoozy people.
Yay though!
I might even watch it again on the way back.
Right, I´m off to eat a delicious breakfast of dry soda crackers and Gatorade. Thankyou South American stomach bug from hell. At least I get to eat it in the sunshine with a rolling ocean view :)
xoxo
Friday, 4 February 2011
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
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
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Lima snaps
Awesome sushi.
Chicharrones.
Inca Cola.
Colourul Lima slums in the background.
Almerjas.
Parque del Amor.
Gardens.
Look out to sea.
Truck's got teeth, near the beach.
Lima beaches
Snow cone with Peruvian fruit flavour
Chicharrones.
Inca Cola.
Colourul Lima slums in the background.
Almerjas.
Parque del Amor.
Gardens.
Look out to sea.
Truck's got teeth, near the beach.
Lima beaches
Snow cone with Peruvian fruit flavour
Lima lazy days
For the last few days I've been lounging around in Lima, wandering along the sea front, taking a tour of the church and crypts of San Fransisco, taking in the sights of historic Barranco quarter with it's pretty architecture and laid back atmosphere, people watching in the Parque del Amor on Miraflores clifftops and drinking Pisco Sours just about everywhere and, most importantly, sampling the local foods, from super fresh and tasty sushi to chicharrones (fried pork served in a bread roll with chilli and tartar sauce, sweet potato and onions) and chicha (corn drink, the inevitable Inca Cola (bright yellow cola that serves as the standard cola here, instead of coke)and almerja (raw fish in lime juice and garlic with onions and served on a shell.
It's summertime in Lima, which means it's about 24-28 degrees during the day and only a little cooler at night. Because it's situated on the coast with hills at it's back, Lima is usually blanketed in cloud and walks along the coastline are misty and mysterious, but when the sun does show it brings Lima to life, showing off the brightly painted houses and colourful gardens everywhere and with the glittering Pacific as a backdrop.
I'll be posting photos as I go as they're taking a long time to upload, but I'll try and label them properly at least.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)