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Just back from Easter island and in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Easter Island started off amazing. We got there in a 5 hour trip in this amazing plane where you had your own tv where you could choose from loads of films and music. We got to the airport and were met by the hostel owner Ana with flower lei necklaces and taken to the hostel. The hostel cost 5 times less than anywhere else on the island and was really very good. The room didnt have proper walls and so was really noisy, and wasnt cleaned every day but it didnt really matter. On our first day on the island we went to the restaurant pea for some lunch, located next to the beach pea which is tiny. We then went to a few of the big moai on the island. They´re really beautiful, and some of them are massive - the biggest one seen through to completion is 12 metres.
We also went to see the musuem which was pretty interesting, all about the island´s history. That night it was pitch black dark getting back to the hostel, no streetlamps. So of course we got a bit lost and flagged some guy down from his motorbike to ask directions. He took us down a wee dark road which put us on edge and we ended up at his house. This was a bit disturbing until we realised we were just beside the hostel and had to climb over a fence to get to it. The hostel owner´s daughter saw us and probably thought we were complete eejits.
The next day we hired out a few mountain bikes and did what was supposed to be a small lap. We couldn´t find a certain moai so just kept going, using some really badly scaled maps, and ended up miles round at the other end of the island. The island is pretty hot and hilly, and we only had one small bottle of water between us so we honestly thought we might pass out from dehydration.
The next day on the island we went for a trip up the west coast with an Austrailian guy called Bill who had married a Rapa Nui woman. He was hilarious, had some really good stories and had helped make what is apparently a really crappy film called Rapa Nui. We went to the Quarry where the moai were made before being transported, this was amazing.
The last day on the island we had planned to go to Orongo. The following three days we had been living off crisp sandwiches as there is no where on the island that accepts Visa. The bank was to open today though where you could get a Visa advance so we went down there in the morning. It turns out that the Visa circuit on the island was temporarily down so we couldn´t get any money. We phoned through to Nationwide who said that theres no way of telling when it would be back up, could be in an hour, but to get the bank to try again. The bank woman refused to, and we got into an argument about it but she was just stubborn for the sake of it. Thankfully Matthew´s sister transfered him through some money online or else we wouldn´t have been able to pay the accomodation of. We really don´t know what we would have done to get off the island.
Easter island was very scenic but not as laid back as the Galapagos. It was really expensive and so we couldn´t have stayed there long. When we were leaving we got a shell necklace each which was lovely but we thought it would get confiscated by the environmental people at santiago who seem to take everything. On the same day we got two toolkit things confiscated and Matthew´s lovely armadillo guitar. It was this real goody-goody type who was horrified at the guitar. We tried to convince him it was plastic which sort of worked as its on its way to the national museum to be inspected. I don´t know why he bothered, you could clearly see the blood stains on the inside of the guitar. All the environmental guys had such smiles on their faces for confiscating the guitar you would have thought it was heroine. Strange.
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