Journaling Jerry's journeys

Okay... where to begin. It's been quite a few years since I updated this blog, it took some effort to figure out my old login, but (obviously) I succeeded.

First, the back story.

A few months ago my friend Vernon returned from Palau and told me his world travels were amazing, but getting increasingly difficult due to his limited vision. He suggested I join him on a journey to, perhaps, Cancun, where there's snorkeling for his interests and desert for my exploration. Cancun? Really? How about somewhere more exotic, less traveled, certainly less commercialized, somewhere neither of us have gone (not difficult there...), and maybe some place I don't know anybody who's visited.

Me and my big mouth.

After a couple of months of anticipation, I picked Vernon up early on Friday morning (9-Oct-2015), drove to the long-term parking lot in Burlingame where we caught a shuttle bus to San Francisco International. The flight from SFO to LAX was uneventful, and thankfully the stopover in Los Angeles was short. The next flight was equally uneventful ... but not so short. Eight (or so) hours later we were in Lima, Peru for fuel and exchanging passengers-- they didn't even let us off the plane. I was hoping to pick up a refrigerator magnet from Peru, but it was not happening this trip. Then another eight-ish hour flight to Santiago, Chile where we were processed through customs (easy) and boarded a 787 for the last leg of our journey.

BIG plane, tiny airport

After another six hours in the air the wheels touched the tarmac at Mataveri International Airport in Hanga Roa, Chile, our final destination. After 26 hours of travel, it was finally getting real. During the entire trip I kept asking myself, "Am I really on Easter Island?"





Day One: October 10, 2015

After collecting our bags, I hailed a taxi. Okay, to be honest 'hailing' is not entirely accurate, and neither is 'taxi.' A guy in a rusty Nissan with a hand-lettered 'TAXI' sign on the dashboard offered us a lift. For only CLP$4,000 he drove us to Oceanic Car Rental where I had arranged to rent a Suzuki Jimny (in the U.S. it's called a Suzuki Samari) for the week.

Next stop, the hotel: The Mataveri Inn. If you know me, I've always said, "I own a GPS not because I want one, but because I need one" because I can't navigate my way out of a paper sack. Unfortunately, my old Garmin doesn't have maps for Easter Island. But that's okay, I printed out the Google map of Hanga Roa. Unfortunately, there are no street signs in Hanga Roa, but that's okay because there are no house numbers either. Sigh. We drove in circles for an hour searching for the Mataveri Inn before I stopped at the car rental place and asked for directions. The guy used google maps on his phone and pinpointed the Inn on the rental car map, but nope, nada, no inn there either. Okay, I remember the web page for the inn has a phone number so I found an internet cafe to look it up, and the very helpful lady at the cafe knows the innkeeper (in a village of 3300 people, it's not too unlikely), called her, and gave us directions! When we arrived at the inn, we found out they had sent a car to the airport to meet us, and neither of us saw the sign with Vernon's name misspelled. And, the place is called Cabanas Mataveri, not Mataveri Inn, both on the sign and on the map.


Dos Locos Touristas

Confident that we now have a place to stay, it's time to play tourist. The best part of being a tourist on Easter Island: I couldn't get too terribly lost, there's only one village, and all roads lead back home. I randomly choose a road, and we arrived at the Rano Kau crater. It's about a mile to the far lip of the volcanic crater and the lake in the middle is a fresh water swamp teeming with life.

Rano Kau

The island has a number of small coves with fishing boats but no ship harbor (which begs the question how they get bulk supplies to the island.)  This is the busier harbor in Hanga Roa, the other harbors I saw seemed quieter but perhaps deeper, judging by the size of the boats.

Hanga Roa Harbor at sunset

Hanga Roa fishing boats

We choose a random restaurant for dinner at the harbor, a cozy place with a french theme and a wooden ship motif inside. The Paella for two was outstanding: shrimp, baby lobster, calamari, and other locally caught fish, and the leftovers was breakfast for the next four days. I still don't know how "doggy bag" would translate to Chilean Spanish, but we had it wrapped up to go.

It was dark when we got back to the hotel and I took a couple of shots of the starry night from the road outside the inn.  I was looking south-west, so I suspect there are constellations in the picture that I can't see from home in San Jose, California. If someone would post a comment identifying what's in the photo, I'd appreciate it.

Starry night outside Cabana Mataveri

That's all for day one on Isla de Pascua, check back soon for day two.

Jerry