Santiago, Chile

Well I made it to Easter Island and back. It was amazing on Easter Island. The weather was perfect, it was sunny the whole time and about mid 20´s. The first view I had of the island was from the plane, it got in at 8:30 at night. The sky was clear and there was a full moon.

I met up with a guy from France and a guy from England. That night we went to see our first moai which are right in town, taking pictures by moonlight.

The first full day we climbed up the highest point on the island, 511 m. It was an amazing view of the whole island, which is only about 35 km in circumference. We could see the Pacific Ocean in every direction. Then we walked home and got lost a couple times trying to take short cuts. We spent about 7 hours walking the first day.

The second day we did a tour which takes you to the major sites. The most amazing part was the quarry, which is where the typical pictures of Easter Island are from. I didn´t find the 'At least you have a nose' moai but there were lots of others. Ate lunch amongst the heads. Then later in the evening took some pictures of the sunset and some more moai.

The last day the french guy and I climbed up the south volcano (about 300m) but this was also amazing. The inside is a lake, about 1.5 km in diameter, and had marsh growing in this cool pattern. The french guy thought it was the most amazing thing he had seen (and he was pretty well-traveled), I thought it was amazing but not that great, not the top 10 anyways. But it was still cool. Plus you could see the whole island again, but from a different view than the first day.

It is the off season on Easter Island (apparently it´s the rainiest month) and so there were hardly any other tourists. In fact there was nothing to do at night so we just had dinner and a beer and then went home. The residencial where we stayed, the family had a big tv, (about 32" at least, I didn´t actually measure it) and their friend came over with his laptop and we watched DVDs most nights. Actually the busiest place at night on the island was the video store, made to look like the Blockbuster logo.

I read in the paper while on the island that it had rained the whole time in Santiago, and that there was flooding. None of the internet places on the island could get a good connection, which they blamed on the weather. However today when we landed it was nice and clear. But the pass to Mendoza (Argentina) has been closed on and off because of the snow -- and apparently tomorrow it´s going to be closed again. So thanks to the internet, I just bought a plane ticket to Mendoza and I´ll be flying there tomorrow. The french guy has just come from Argentina, and everything is very cheap there now because of the devaluation of the currency. He was having big steak dinners with a bottle of wine for $3 US. Sounds good to me.

So I haven´t checked any sports sites yet and last I heard the Leafs had won 1-0 in game 5. I´ll check next.

Santiago, Chile

Well I made it to Santiago no problem over night. Tomorrow I take off for Easter Island so I haven´t done much here. It´s rained non-stop since I arrived. Supposedly this is just a `largo lluvioso` (big rain) and it´s not always like this. In any case it´s different weather on Easter Island and then again on the other side of the Andes for the rest of my trip. Well I´m off to go eat dinner (I had to check my email because I forgot when my flight was tomorrow). This place is a bit different from when I was here about 5 years ago -- everyone has a cell phone and internet cafes are everywhere.