Easter Island

We boarded a plane in Santiago, Chile at 5:30 in the morning on Thursday bound for Easter Island, after traveling all day and night the previous day. Jeff had upgraded us to first class, so we could stretch out and get some sleep, and it was a brilliant move on his part. We arrived well-rested and ready to begin a new adventure. That first day, our priorities were showering and finding a place to do laundry, and we had moderate success with both. The shower was cold but got us clean, and we were told that the only laundry facility on the island had "blown up" last week. However, our landlord's mother offered to do our laundry, so we were not completely out of luck. After those important tasks were taken care of and our national park tickets and groceries were purchased, we found a place to have lunch and then visited an awesome playground overlooking the ocean. The kids played there happily while Jeff and I wandered down the path to see our first moai statues, which was just amazing. We have both always wanted to visit Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui), and we couldn't believe we were actually here! We all reconvened just as the sky opened up and started spilling its contents, and we headed back to our cozy little cabin.

The next day, we set out to explore the tiny island, which has a total area of only 63 square miles and contains three volcanos but only one town. The drive along the coast is absolutely stunning, and we had so much fun stopping to look at all the moai, especially the large group of 15 that stands on the coast and the ones scattered along the slopes of the Rano Rarraku volcano, which is believed to be the birthplace of all 887 statues on the island. We also visited another volcano, Rano Kau, which houses a mysterious village and has amazing views of the Pacific. It also has an amazing crater, which is now filled with a freshwater lagoon that acts like a greenhouse for many different types of plants. There is one spot from which you can view all these things at roughly the same time, and we believe it may be one of our favorite places on Planet Earth. Later in the evening, we had dinner at Pea, which sits right on the water.

On Saturday, we set out for another day of exploring, revisiting a few places and hitting some of the sites we had skipped during the rain storm that moved through the day before. We kept being astounding that we were actually here! It is such an amazing place and has been on our bucket list forever. We ended the day with an amazing dinner at Te Moana.

Today was our last day on the island, but we had time to visit the museum and Rano Kau again before our afternoon flight. We are so thankful we had the opportunity to visit this magical place!

Moai

Rano Kau
Clockwise from left top: Crater, Orango Village,
View of the Pacific, Rock carving

Amazing Rapa Nui

Fun for the whole family
(Notes: Top left--We never check bags, so it was special for
Clay to pick up his bag in the baggage claim. Bottom right--
Ruth wanted to say she had driven on Easter Island, so she
had the opportunity to learn to drive a stick shift.)

Arranged by size

Some of the moai scattered on the slopes of Rano Raraku

One of our favorite places on Planet Earth