Isla de Pascua: Easter Eggs!

This morning, Jon made a very special breakfast, Easter Island style: an onion and banana omelette! Now this may sound slightly strange to you, but believe us, it works. Try it like this: take a large, sweet and juicy onion and sweat it down gently in plenty of butter until translucent, adding three beaten eggs and then at the final stage, a chopped up ripe banana. Rapa Nui food tends to use the banana at every opportunity, sweet or savoury. You should try it, it’s really rather good!

And talking of food, Curry Night was a veritable feast, including another Easter Island staple: pineapple. Somehow, a hot, sweet and sour sauce is really lifted by the powerful red and yellow chillies we can find at each little greengrocers, together with large and juicy chunks of pineapple. We’re writing this on our penultimate night on the island: one week is just not enough to see all the wonderful archaeological sites, take in the stunning landscapes and multicoloured azure seascapes, chill, relax and generally recover from a punishing schedule around the continent. (Incidentally, that schedule is about to be resumed, so get out your maps and prepare to follow us around the northern zone of this expedition: it’s going to be hot and steamy!)
Tonight’s feast has just been Italian. An amazing chilli risotto, a hot Bolognese salsa, our ubiquitous tomato and onion salad, together with our trademark garlic bread. Now take a swift gander at the top of this blog; we did, after all promise you fantastic food. But as we wrote that, back in October, we had no idea that all the fantastic food we were promising would be home cooked. The fact is, this isn’t Asia. It’s certainly not Thailand with the street side woks rustling up heavenly flavours. Our dreams of getting hold of a heaped plate of food for under a dollar were shattered ages ago, but our food never fails! And it’s cheap!

Isla de pascua: Rano Kau and Orongo

“Tokirau!”
Well, we don’t want anybody feeling left out, do we? And besides this, our new canine companion from the Miru Hostel has really grown on us and it’s like he’s always been our third musketeer.
We walked towards the upper edge of Hanga Roa where houses and people became few and far as we made our way onto the off-road path towards the magnificent crater lake of Rano Kau and the ancient ceremonial village of Orongo. Tokirau, not deliberately, was always sure to keep us on the ball every so often by attracting other territorial Lupus-like beasts who charged in our direction, snarling. To be honest our quadrapedal amigo isn’t the fighting type and would, more often than not, retreat, hiding behind us for safety. We can assure you that standing between groups of vicious, protective dogs is not at all fun, but we remained remarkably unscathed.
The crater of Rano Kau was beyond our imagination and was not at all disappointing. In fact, it was breathtaking and so large that it seemed to be swallowing a huge chunk of Easter Island. Its dusty, sooty grey interior had collapsed into the well-preserved crater lake itself, which enclosed floating islands of various vegetation and colourful flora. Stopping at the top of this large hill for lunch of bread rolls and pate was doubtlessly the right decision before continuing to Orongo.
The sixteenth century village of Orongo appeared as small, flattened rocks, now with a light dusting of yellow lichens, that had been carefully stacked without any binding material to form wide, but shallow, fortresses looking out to the Pacific Ocean and Motu Nui, the uninhabited island located about one or two hundred metres offshore where the migratory seabirds, namely the Sooty Turns, arrive to lay their eggs. We were fortunate enough to see amazing petroglyphs, symbolic to Make-Make; the Rapa Nui god that revolves around a trinity of the Spring season, fertility rites and migratory seabirds. When one looks closely at these rock carvings, it’s just about possible to make out the Bird Man himself.
Talking of birds, we saw another large bird approaching the island from Santiago who had a tricky job landing in the strong crosswinds.

Isla de Pascua: Rano Raraku & Tongariki

We’re back on the bikes! Off we pedalled up the hill and out of Easter Island’s capital, Hanga Roa, with the punishing sun shining down on us. We felt very refreshed, though, by the strong, cooling breeze and the sound of huge, turquoise barrel waves crashing down on the coastline. Wild horses roamed freely in groups; stallions, mares and foals all together. The placid few horses didn’t give us a second look but continued grazing as we passed whereas the warier adults looked at us curiously, whilst their jumpy foals sprung quickly to retreat a pace towards their parents.
The first stop was at Vaihu, where the Moai had been completely untouched since the rediscovery of the Island. The bubbly, slightly decayed, stone heads appeared to have fallen over, but the truth is that they had been pushed over by rival villages many years ago.
The second stop was at Rano Raraku, where there was a crater lake, which served as a water hole for happy herds of horses, and many more Moai statues submerged to varying degrees by the sharply, raised earth on the mountainside. The expressions on their long faces were all quite serious, and where visible, their ears seemed to stretch down forever but were actually proportionately accurate by human standards.

The Moai are considered the ancestors of the Rapa Nui people who live on the island and the finished ones had been constructed so that they look away from the sea and inland in order to protect today’s villagers. However, at this place, we noticed they were gazing out towards the ocean due to the fact that this was once the quarry where the first steps of Moai production took place, but this particular set was never completed and, in effect, the mission was aborted.

Our third and final stop for the day was Tongariki, a magnificent line of no fewer than fifteen Moai statues standing high, right in front of the sea shore. As we were tearing along the muddy path on our bikes, this then distant site appeared like a fine comb as the heads protruded from the flat ahu on which they stand. One of these Moai, unusually, still remained with his hat on. Can you see him?


During the warring period, each village was attacked and all the Moais were toppled. Archaeologists then replaced them upright upon their Ahu, but here they were disastrously toppled again during the 1960s by a tsunami. The Japanese have since worked painstakingly to restore this Ahu to its full ceremonial glory.
The cycle back was just as amazing as the outward journey, apart from two wannabe-fierce hounds annoying us with their empty threat barks. They had us going for a split second though!
We’ve been exceptionally lucky again by being scooped up by Sandra as we transited the Arrivals Hall, and not only have we found some of the cheapest beds on the island (we know, we know, we said we would be camping…) but we’re staying with a lovely family. She’s thrilled we chose to stay with her, and we replied in return that being with a family is always so much better than languishing in an impersonal (and often dirty) set up, shoddily run by underpaid menials. There.
Everything, virtually, is imported, and the prices are sky-high! But that doesn’t stop us from rustling up some tasty feasts! Try this at home to recreate our Easter Island three-courser:
Gently fry plenty of chopped garlic in lots of butter, then quickly add slices of robust bread to soak up the liquid and begin to crisp. Whilst this is sizzling, create a zingy onion salad by finely chopping onion, tomato and fresh chilli (seeds in, don‘t be a wimp!) and adding plenty of lime juice, salt, pepper and sugar together with some oil from a tin of pickled red bell-peppers. This is fresh and invigorating! The capsicums themselves go into a pasta sauce of onion and tomato, livened up by sausages and another chopped chilli. This works ideally with fusilli, but penne would be equally fine. Keep on watching, because tomorrow night is curry night!

Isla de Pascua: Moai and Fish...

We seriously need to write to Rick Stein about this one. We return to Ahu Tahai about 6.00 pm with a small picnic and some tasty apple juice, specifically to swim off the ancient boat-launching slipway which the original inhabitants had constructed between the massive and elegant Ahus which lie just north of Hanga Roa. We had been there earlier in the day, admiring the views, the Moais and the wild horses. But now it was time to immerse in the Pacific. There were three of us, Jon, Simon and the loyal and faithful Tokirau, who even became quite concerned as Simon swam out into the bay: he looked like he was contemplating jumping in to save him!
As we paddled and dried ourselves off, an apparition hove into view. At first it was obviously just a young man with snorkel and flippers, but as the water became too shallow, he had to stand up.
Suddenly we had been transported back 500 years, to the original age when men were the hunters. He had been fishing, with his miniature harpoon and about ten fish strapped around his waist on some twine. And twine, complete with a small skull for decoration, was all that he was wearing. He proceeded to de-scale, clean and gut the fish, including one specimen of amazing sword-like proportions, and one large pescatorial creature, the food of kings, which was bright blue!
Afterwards, as he made his way with his wife and tiny baby off the stone platform, back in the direction of the hill behind the ahus, it seemed as if he’d completely forgotten about the sword-like fish, so Jon called to him that it was still lying between the rocks. What was that? Although he looked fierce and terrifying, he’d asked in a very friendly way if we liked eating fish and if we’d like to join them for a barbeque to watch the sun go down. And of course we would.
Off they went first, just as we were drying off following our Pacific dip but we met up with them just in front of a secretive cave, where we saw the occasional tourist walk by obliviously. Jon was first to get there, so eager to see this new culture that he left Simon and Tokirau behind. He found himself running up the grassy verge behind the cavern, aiding our new friends in getting firewood, which consisted of dried out palm fronds and, of course, a few logs.
We chucked the dried leaves on top of an elliptical pile of aerated volcanic rock before adding the wood and setting alight. The next job was to take some of the smaller stones of the same type and shove them into the fiery mess, so that they reached such a high temperature that they began to sizzle. This meant that the moment had come to place the world’s freshest bream-like fish and another unidentifiable sword-like eel onto the smoky rocks and wait, not forgetting to turn the fish every so often.

When the moment of taste came as we tucked into this delicia, we were blown away by the freshness and purity and couldn’t get enough. Plus there were delicious small, sweet bananas to accompany, which made for a beautiful contrast in flavours. Unforgettable!

Isla de Pascua: Better Late Than Never!

Our comfortable Boeing 767 gave us a great six-hour flight, and as we were travelling westwards, we had the chance to chase a perfect, orangesunset. The meal was served by the most charming stewardess who plied us with frequent refills of tasty Chilean Chardonnay, and the metal cutlery made the whole thing feel like business class. The latest Harry Potter made the journey fly by, and Simon also found time for an amazing documentary about Vinicius Moraes as well as an arty-but-edgy Chilean film about school days at the time of Salvador Allende, It grew dark and we commenced our descent, nose down and ears going pop.
Bang! No ordinary bang, but a massive one as the entire plane shook, not just with the deafening momentary noise, but with the ripples from the impact. This wasn’t even just violent turbulence: we had surely hit something. And then we realised: it was the ground. We had arrived on Easter Island…
Sandra, motherly and disarmingly kindly, took charge of us immediately we had cleared customs. Finding a room here can be tricky, and to be fair, our original plan had been to erect the tent on the foreshore in order to take in the amazing sunsets. But Sandra’s family home, with its massive kitchen, family comings-and-goings and friendly chats (all in Spanish, except when we are learning our first words in Rapa Nui) win us over immediately. One member of the family, the dog called Tokirau, which means El Aire in Castillian, takes such a shine to us that je takes us for a quick midnight stroll to explore the township of Hanga Roa.
And we have an entire week to explore this magical paradise!

Thwarted in Lima?

Of course we made it to Lima airport in time for check in! But one of the features of this city is the Garua, or thick, damp fog. It happens all the time, so surely this major international airport has ways of functioning under these hazardous conditions? Nope, this is Peru: airport, cerrado. Hotel? No Senor...
Scheduled departure, 12.55 in the morning. Actual departure, 5.00 in the afternoon. Now LAN may be a One World alliance member, but don’t expect their ground services to be in any way professional. But to be fair they did give us a free lunch at one of the terminal restaurants. There had also been time earlier in the morning to slip into Lima (Miraflores, to be precise) on the ‘S’ micro. This is a small minibus, packed to the rafters with people, tearing along a busy dual carriageway, honking its horn at every other vehicle and braking furiously to avoid collisions. But at least it was cheap… Roll on Rapa Nui!

The Long Journey From Cusco

Cruz del Sur buses are very comfortable and we left Cusco bang on time. We even stopped around 11 pm in Abancay to pick up some more passengers. But around 1 in the morning, as we proceeded through a magical valley, high in the Andes Sierra, we stopped and turned off the engine. Time passed, yes, plenty of time. We worried that something was amiss, but sleep became more pressing and we dozed on and off. About seven hours later, we awoke and stumbled out of the coach to see just what the problem was. There had been a massive landslide in the night and no traffic could pass. The valley was sheer paradise, and we had become stranded within it! Some eight hours late, we started to move once more. The Andean views were stunning, and soon we had descended into a dusty desert-like town. “Where are we, please?”
“Nazca!”
“No, don’t be silly, Nazca is hundreds of kilometers from where we need to be?”
“Nazca.”
The race is on: can we make it to Lima in time for our flight check in? Will we be allowed to fly on to our next big destination?
Well, did we make it? You’ll just have to wait and see and follow the next few blog entries very carefully… See you soon!