Rapa Nui - Day Five

After the rather epic drinking encounter with our new Chilean friends neither of us were particularly quick off the mark in the morning. So much so that it was about midday before we had eaten our eggy sarnarges and decided we really should get on with doing something.

Overnight the wind had really picked up and had changed direction so as to be heading straight towards the front entrance of our tent. Also apparent was a huge swell coming in toward us from the sea. The waves were absolutely vast and we could feel the spray from the tent.


There were white horses as far as the eye could see and the coast heading away from us was just a mass of seething frothiness.


We thought it would be a good day to return to the lovely beach Anakena on the other side of the island as the Chileans told us that the wind would be much less over there and from our day of driving it seemed that quite often it was sunny over there when it was more cloudy on this side of the island. Unfortunately, after enquiring with the moody young lady who runs the campsite, we found the cost of a taxi would be 12000 pesos, or 12 quid each way. We had a good think about it and decided we were sure that some cheerful types would be kind enough to give us a lift back and just paid for a taxi to take us there.

The driver was a bit of mentalist who felt the need to descend some of the steeper hills as fast as he could in third gear. I thought this might have been just because his brakes were buggered, but he just about got us there in one piece. He seemed a bit put out when we said we didn't want to book a time to go back, and this slightly sowed the seeds of doubt in my mind about our optimistic plan.

Clairy snapped this pic of the solitary Moai Ahu Ature Huki, that she had only managed to capture from behind on our mega-photo-thon of day 3.


Oh god yeah...looking hot on the sunny beach. It really is such a gorgeous setting. The wind was quite strong still mind, and all our bags and coats got totally filled with sand that was being blown along the beach.


There's me reading my book. After this we went for a swim and were the only people in the water. It was pretty chilly getting in, but you get used to it quite quickly. The only problem then was when the sun went in. We really did feel the wind chill factor. In the end we waited for a nice long unbroken bit of sunshine to peg it out and dry ourselves off.


We decided we shouldn't leave it too late to try hitching home. This was mainly because we had absolutely no way of getting back if we weren't successful. The mobile didn't work and there were no phones around.

This is the view looking down from the road where we had decided to try and hitch. Anakena beach really is stunning with its palm trees and the Moai in the distance.


Oh hi! Finally our hangovers had pretty much gone...


Though we'd have been looking like this if we hadn't manage to get a lift and had to walk the 11 miles home!


Fortunately after 3 or 4 rented jeeps with tourists that totally ignored us went by, a rather battered one stopped. 2 nice young lads from Santiago cheerfully informed us just how cheap it was...possibly the cheapest on the island in my opinion, and possibly for a reason. But they were proper cheerful and even agreed to change their plans in order to drop us in back in town. We had some nice chats, and I pretended to know some stuff about football, although nearly gave the game away by not knowing who won the champions league, d'oh.

Another fab, if seemingly rather short day.