Mountains and Moai's

So, we arrived in Santiago on the other side of the Andes safe and sound. My old friend from the OGS, Kevin Heather (who now lives in La Serena, Chile) had organized a driver and an apartment hotel for us to stay in. We were staying in what is known as Sanhatten. The Chilean version of Manhatten, Santiago style. We were within walking distance of downtown.

 This is a really interesting area. The buildings are all different and very modern.
We took a funicular train, built in the 1920's up to one of the small hills in Santiago. We had beautiful views of the city as well as ones of the Virgin Mary blessing the city.

While getting organized for the trip over to Easter island (this is a five and a half hour flight), the earth moved.......No Richard not what you are thinking, there was a tremor from an earthquake whose epicenter was abut 500km north. We were on the ninth floor. That was enough earthquake for me, thanks!
Off to Easter Island we flew. This island is not very big and it has 17 volcanoes, none active though.

The first day we took a guided tour (trust me, the roads leave a lot to be desired as I think they were originally for donkeys!) that took us to some amazing sites. Our first view of the famous Moai (did I mention this was a Unesco site, continuing on our world tour of these?) was a small quarry with a few fallen face over with one partially buried head. The next stop was the picture everyone has seen of the seven. They are truly a sight worth seeing. Funny, Dwayne looks just like one, don't you think? I was in awe and speechles, shut up, I know that you all have been trying for years, yeah, yeah!

We also saw more small quarries where the top knots were carved in a different volcanic rock. At this quarry there was a current archaeological dig going on. Cool!  The following day we ended up at the mother lode. This quarry part way up the Rano Raraku volcano was unbelievable. There are at least 500 Moai's here. All in different stages of carving and transportation.

The ones that are upright look towards the ocean as do the seven we saw yesterday. There all all kinds here. Different eyes, faces, heights, etc. If there are eyeballs the iris are white coral and the pupils are obsidian or basalt. These ones are a bit creepy. There is no explanation as to why this practice suddenly stopped. The history of this culture is not really known, just that they are gone, sad. The quarry and the Maoi are quite along way up.

 But in the distance you can see fifteen Moai close to shore. A trip down to these showed that they are massive with the tallest being 10m high. These were repaired after a tsunami in 1960. A picture from 1957 allowed the reconstruction of these huge carvings.

We are off for an overnight in Santiago tomorrow followed by a week in Buenos Airies. If Easter Isalnd is not on your bucket list, it should be. This island has a population of 4,000 with only 20,000 tourists coming per year. Get here before the rest of the world, its worth it.