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Rock Heads and Tropical Santa (Easter Island & Tahiti),

(December 2-8, 1997)

Hello All-

We spent our last night in Latin America drinking beer and playing chess at a cafe on the main plaza in Santiago, Chile. The fanciest hotel in Santiago is on this square and is called Hotel Carrera. It is also an infamous hotel because of a failed assination attempt on General Pinochet which destroyed one of the rooms. What happened was that the assasin aimed a time-delayed bazooka at Pinochet's office, the problem was he mounted the bazooka onto a photo tripod!!

Easter Island ("Rapa Nui")--

The next morning we took the plane to Easter Island (Isla de Pascua), five hours from the Chilean mainland. There was a catch getting on the plane, as the xray machine detected Don's leatherman knife in my carry-on, and it was confiscated until we landed at our destination. Landing on Easter Island was exciting. The airstrip is only as long as the island, and there is no turning back, as the nearest land is 2000 miles away. A few years ago, the islanders blocked the runway with bulldozers and rocks, in protest of price increases, and would not let the plane land. But we made it without incident, arriving at midnight, we were stuffed into a Suzuki samurai with two Japanese tourists and all our luggage. I sat half on the driver's lap and half on Don's lap in the front seat as we drove on bumpy dirt roads to our new home. We stayed with a true Pascuan family, the Rirorokos. In the morning we rented our own Suzuki Samurai and started visiting all the stone "moai" statutes located around the coastline.

The island is very barren, not tropical. No trees, except for a grove of imported eucalyptus. (By the way, there is a Island forestry dept, but most of the rangers can be found drinking beer at one of the bars at the harbor). They have a serious alcohol problem here which usually starts with a carton of wine which is drunk half down, then a beer is mixed in with the remains of the wine for an "Easter Island cocktail". We were offered some by a guy sitting on the dock, but declined.

The Rapa Nui coastline consists of sharp, steep black cliffs and the sea is very rough. Most of the Moai statues we saw had been tipped over, a result of inter-tribal warfare many years ago. They were still very impressive in size, 12- 20 feet tall (some as big as 60 feet) and carved from 5-20 tons of porous lava rock. The Japanese came in and re-erected about seven of them at one sight. The most impressive place we visited, and one the most amazing and mysterious places we've ever been, was the Moai quarry. This is the volcanic crater where the Moai were cut and carved before they were dragged to the coast.

There are over a hundred Moai still at the quarry. Some half buried, and cantered at different angles. Some were left partially carved out of the rock face. We climbed to the top of the crater to see the beautiful lake inside and there were many Moai there too!

At the end of the day, we were covered in red dust. There is also red volcanic rock on the island, from which the hats or "top knots" of the Moai are made which we also visited. When a Moai was tipped over, their red "hat" usually rolled quite far from their gray broken bodies. The next day we visited the Orongo ceremonial site. This is another volcanic crater where there was a village and many petroglyphs. It is also the sight of the "birdman legend" which was a contest among the young men in the village each year to collect the first "sooty tern" egg from a nearby islet.

To do this, they had to climb down the cliff, swim a couple miles in cold shark infested waters, and find the egg, tie it to the head, swim back, scale the cliff, and deliver it to the chief. Whoever won, was pretty much "king of the hill" for a year.

Our final night on the island, our family prepared for us a traditional "ground-oven" meal. They cooked fish, taro, and chicken in a pit in the ground all day. Then they served us the food on banana leaves with beautiful Easter lilies and other tropical flowers decorating the table. Our flight left at 10pm, and the whole village came out to the airport to see the plane off.

Tourism is the main industry there.

Tahiti--

We arrived in Tahiti at 1am and spent the night in the airport. We had a very unpleasant immigration officer check us in. He was unsatisfied that we didn't know where we were going to stay and sarcastically asked if we planned to sleep on the beach. We bit our tongues and didn't tell him that at $100 for a Motel6, sleeping on the beach was definitely an option.

But while we were grumbling about our own experience, we met an Australian man who had fared worse- he found out he had to pay US$80 to enter Tahiti! He chalked this up to the bad relations between France and Australia ever since France tried to bring nuclear waste to New Zealand and Australia helped block it.

While pacing the airport corridors, we found a bullet (no casing) on the floor.

We assume it fell off one of the gendarme's belts and at 4am, Karen wanted to go hand it back to one of them ("Here, you lost a bullet"). Instead, we decided to keep it as a souvenir.

I am telling you this now, because it got us in a bit of trouble later on.

We planned to catch the 6am ferry to the island of Morrea. It was horrible rainy weather and the ferry ride was very rough and we both got seasick.

On the island we had to catch a "le truck", which is a form of public transportation which basically means you hop in the back of a pick-up truck. We were soaked and tired and hungry. We planned to stay at this inexpensive campground, but when we arrived at the place, the road forked off, one side leading to a very nice French bungalow resort. Well we just sort of gravitated that way and situated ourselves very nicely there after beating the Frenchies down on the price.

The next day it stopped raining and we rented a car. We had our choice of a Peugeot, a Peugeot, or a Peugeot. The beaches were beautiful and the snorkeling great. The only drawback to this place is the high prices. No one pays income tax here, so everything is taken out on the consumer. For example, a bag of potato chips was US$4, coffee is $3, a pina colada was $7! We compromised and bought a carton of alcoholic Mai Tais for $6 and sat on the beach and drank it.

Right down the road from our bungalow was a Christmas Fair that started the day we arrived. There was even a Polynesian Santa Claus! We tried the traditional

Tahitian dish; raw fish in coconut milk, washed down with pineapple juice. There were many flowers and wood carvings at the fair. I bought a beautiful lei of white tiara flowers to wear. When it came time to leave Morrea, we decided to take the faster, fancier catamaran back to Tahiti island. The ferry took one hour, but the catamaran advertised it would take only 12 minutes.

Pretty impressive. So we sat on the decked with all our luggage and decided to time the trip with Don's stop watch. Well, we pulled out of the port pretty slowly, already losing 4 minutes off the time. Then we took off! Two Tahitian women went flying by us. The crew opened the door and yelled and waved at us to come in but I couldn't standup. So we made a chain and passed our luggage to them and then they pulled us in. It was a wild ride.

After that we had a long trip. A flight from Tahiti to New Zealand and then on to Melbourne. Both New Zealand and Australia have economies that are mostly based on agriculture and so their customs are very strict. I knew this. Several years ago I came to New Zealand and had my seashell collection from Indonesia confiscated and my hiking boats had to be steam cleaned on the spot before they would let me in. Well when we arrived in Melbourne, and Don and I declared nothing. We didn't think about the shell necklaces given to us by our hosts in

Morrea, or our wood necklaces given to us on Easter Island, or our leather dice cups we bought in Bolivia, and we certainly didn't think about the bullet

I had in my bag, picked up off the floor of the Papeete Airport. Well, we were separated from the flock and sent to "the room". We were suspicious, they said, because we traveled to many places only for a few days. They went through everything in our bags - including the laundry detergent.

Then they found the bullet. The customs guy asked, "Do you know what this is?", and I said, "Well you know that's a funny story ........ isn't it Don....." Anyway, we were absolved in the end and they even gave us the bullet back.

Australia--

The first thing Don did when we arrived in Melbourne was stock our hotel room fridge with beer. The first thing I did was to go to a salon and have all my hair cut off in anticipation of the heat we will suffer in Asia. We have also been eating a lot here, especially fresh salads and ice water. All taboo in Latin America. We keep filling up our glasses in the bathroom sink and saying "hey look I'm drinking the water!"

Very exciting.

Well that's it so far for Australia. We have koala bears, kangaroos, and a penguin parade in our near future though.

love, don and karen

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