Our last full day on Easter Island, and we were up again for a 9am half day tour. We’d found a rumoured coffeeshop on TripAdvisor that supposedly opened as early as 7am, so decided to stop by on the way to the tour. Polynesian Coffee and Tea turned out not only to be open, but have a super friendly proprietor and brewed a very nice strong double espresso. I would definitely have the energy to power through this tour!
Much smaller tour group for the half day tour, only about eight of us, including a couple of people who’d also been on the full day tour before. I made a couple more efforts to engage them in conversation, but it was in vain – they were just completely uninterested. Well, their loss 😉 First stop of the day was on the south side of the island at Ahu Vinapú.
Runs of several moai knocked off a platform…against the ocean. Easter Island sure knows how to make even an amateur photographer look pretty good!
Ruins of the platform, and the head from one of the moai. One thing that was different about this site is that the stones on the platform were set absolutely perfectly next to each other with little gap, leaving them to wonder…why.
Sad moai face looking up at us:
After Ahu Vinapú it was time to drive back up to the crater we hiked the first day. I was really looking forward to this, because it would give us a chance to appreciate it not winded, and in much better light. See what I mean? Look at that view down into the crater!
We were also not too tired to go and find the village of Orongo. We might have actually gone on the first day if we had known how relatively easy it was…a simple walk around the “right” side of the crater….until you come to “end” of the crater, which you can see in the first picture above as well from the other side:
So, this is a good place to talk about the Legend of the Bird Man (known in Rapa Nui as the Tangata Manu). Every year, one young man from each tribe would live in seclusion out at Orongo, training for the annual bird man competition. Whenever the first sooty tern (bird) would return to the island and lay an egg, all the young men would swim out to the islands of Moto Nui and Moto Ini and look for the eggs. The islands:
First one to bring it successfully back to the main island, their patron (you didn’t think they’d actually get the reward, did you?) was named the Bird Man for the next year, and basically lived like royalty. Yes, many of them died while attempting it, including falling from the cliffs and being eaten by sharks.
The houses in Orongo where they lived while training. Those doors are barely a foot high, and the inside 3-4 feet high. The idea was that when visitors came, they would have to crawl in on hands and knees, automatically making them submissive to the owner:
Near the ruins of Orongo were also some recreations of cave art which had been found:
One more look down into the volcanic lake:
One last stop on the way back to town, at the very same caves we’d walked by the first day and been unable to go in because the cave was collapsing. Oh well, a great chance to get better pictures in a bit better lighting:
After being dropped off from the tour, we headed across the street and had lunch at what TripAdvisor called the best bargain on Easter Island: a restaurant called “Club Sandwich.” Lots of reviews mentioned they ate here every day because it was such a good bargain. I had the Rapa Nui Burger, which was basically a hamburger with cheese and grilled peppers…sort of like a cheesesteak version of a burger. Delicious, but omg so heavy and filling.
After lunch, I wasn’t feeling overly mobile, and it was a gorgeous day, so we parked ourselves next to the ocean and just enjoyed it…and had a few pisco sours…and watched the ocean…
Back to Mama Nui Glamping for a little bit of late afternoon relaxing, and enjoying our geodesic dome one final time.
After a bit of a rest, we headed to the ice cream place by the glamping site, and had ice cream with the locals one last time. No idea why this place wasn’t more popular with tourists, but it was always packed with locals. Mmmm, rum raisin:
I made a friend who wanted a bit of my ice cream….I was sad I couldn’t take him home!
…I’m a sucker for that sad face!
Back to Te Moai, where we enjoyed one last round of sunset pisco sours:
…and Mother Nature cooperated and put on a spectacular show!
The place we were thinking of eating was hard to find, so we eventually ended up at a different place….which brought me a huge octopus carpacio and bowl of mushroom risotto. Waaaaay too much food today, but delicious!
Full and happy, it was back to glamp for one final night before getting ready to fly to Santiago for a few days in a real hotel!
