HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Shopping
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Spending money shopping
WORD OF THE DAY: Beautiful-it’s just beautiful here
So a free day today, my last day on Easter Island. I had 2 things I needed to do and that was to get to the post office to buy stamps for my postcards and the post office also have an Eater Island stamp that they will put in your passport. Once again not sure on the legality of putting a non-government/official stamp in your passport, but I got one when I was Ushuaia, one for Antarctica at Port Lockroy and one at Macchu Piccu. They just aren’t any old stamps, they have a pretty cool bragging right, so I wanted to get that done as the arrival stamp at customs is just a plain old boring Chile stamp. I have a dozen of those already. Boring. The other thing I wanted to get done was to buy these stone statues of Moai. The ones I saw the other day were probably a little big and more than I wanted to pay (which has never stopped me) but the size was an issue as packing space is now at a premium, even my hand luggage backpack is brimming to the point I am just waiting for the zips to cry out and break on me. I don’t know how it got to that point, and there is probably enough room to put some things still in my big backpack, but I have this niggling little fear that if my checked in backpack never arrives at its destination and I had things in there that can’t be replaced I would be devastated. So anything I don’t want to lose I carry on me and this seems to be growing with each destination. You know the basics of charges for ‘everything’, jewelry, Blackberry notebook, laptop and now more recently my finished 12 month diary, I would be heartbroken if I lost that, plus all the break-able gifts and souvenirs I am now buying on my run home, well I guess I can see now where it is all coming from.
I think my body clock is still on Rosita/Tucan time. I woke at 5.30am (6.30am mainland) and found I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I completed yesterday’s blog, updated my diary and read my book till 8.30am, where I showered, changed and made it to breakfast by 9am for my usual 4 pieces of ham and cheese toast, a glass of juice and a black tea with one sugar. I am a creature of habit that is for sure. I had a wad of photos to load from yesterday, so after breakfast, with everyone on their day tours I had hoped that the Wi-Fi would be a reasonable speed. It was a little faster, but it was taking twice as long to load pictures. I used the loading time to reply to long overdue emails and at 11am I shut it all down to make the post office before 12 noon. Town loosely called so with pretty much 1 main street and a few shops feeding off to the side was a 10 minute walk from the hotel along the seafront. The Taha Tai was in a pretty good spot for the views and also the sunsets each night. I bee lined straight for the post office with one stop to buy some stickers and a small card. As I stood in line with my passport, she knew exactly what I was there for and had the stamp in hand when I stepped to the counter. I also bought 3 stamps for post cards that I was going to write over lunch and for good measure I also got my Globetrotters book stamped as well.
Some of the shops were closed being a Saturday, but 85% of them were open. There is a lot of ‘Pacific island’ stuff to buy. You know anything frangipani, lots of Hawaiian looking shirts, sarongs, feathered earrings and headpieces, anything made from coconuts. Its stuff I had seen before in Tahiti, Fiji and Hawaii, it could have been from anywhere it really wasn’t pertaining to Easter Island as such. That is why I was on the mission to get some Moai statues. I found some in a shop on my way back down the other side but there were no prices on them, so I asked the shop lady and she said she was new and the owner had left yesterday so she would phone her and ask. Based on the size and depending on the cost I was going to buy 3 of them. Anyway she tried to call and then said that she was out of credit on her phone and couldn’t get a price. Sorry she couldn’t help me. WHAT? I was going to buy 3 of these statues at around 30 bucks a pop and I couldn’t because you didn’t know the price. Goodness me, that can’t be good for business right? So I asked if there was somewhere that had similar ones and she said they also had a stall at the markets and they definitely would be able to help. So I walked into the next shop a little further down the road and they actually had better looking Moai and they were 25 bucks each, they were made of a lighter rock and better quality and they took Visa. This was perfect. I also decided to get my god-daughters these cute pacific dolls and I have also bought some cool boy necklaces of Easter Island motifs for Tippy’s boys in Las Vegas. They had these cool shark teeth necklaces, but they looked pretty sharp and I didn’t want the kids to cut themselves on them so I went for the safer option. I hope they like them. So it was a successful shop and when I went to pay, the Visa machine connection was down, so I had enough USD to pay in cash and walked out of there a very happy camper. I did stop in the last few remaining shops and I did find a strapless Hawaiian looking dress that will be perfect for Barbados and with a jacket could wear it on my ‘city’ stays for the rest of the trip. No more ‘back packing’ for me. Well I still have my backpack, but no need to look like one anymore as I re-enter western society where I can wear makeup, blow dry my hair and get out of my t-shirts and shorts for more than 1 day.
I stayed in town to have lunch. As I had spent most of my US dollars and I only had 8,000 pesos left, I was looking at which restaurant I would be able to afford to eat at. My last stop was a restaurant on the water overlooking the endless ocean and I asked if they took Visa, to which it was a yes, so I then felt confident I could order whatever I wanted an just charge to the card. So I got a spaghetti carbonara and a coke for the grand total of 31AUD and as good as the pasta was it was a very small portion. So the penny dropped that it’s just not my hotel’s restaurant that charges a fortune it is the island all over. It certainly isn’t a cheap place, but when you really only need to spend 3 days here, it isn’t like it will cost the earth at the end of the day for the rewards that you get from the islands attractions. The view from the restaurant was amazing, a deck right over the water facing the endless ocean and this morning an old fashioned sail boat, like out of Pirates of the Caribbean type ship, was sitting out a ways and it just looked natural to have something like that anchored in the harbor.
I walked back to the hotel midafternoon and started to load yesterday’s photos to Facebook. The weather had gone from rain in the morning, to a beautiful day during lunch to some clouds and some splattering of rain in the afternoon. So it was a perfect way to wile the last of my afternoon in the lounge as the storm rolled in and then out. That is the beauty of this mystical island the weather just changes at the drop of a hat. I had my last dinner back at ‘my’ restaurant and the same waitress from the last 4 days didn’t even bother to bring over the menu as I had the chicken and prawn dish with French fries for the 4th night in a row, not including it the first day I had it for lunch. It was super tasty and why not orders it again (for the 5th time) and not feel bad that I hadn’t tried anything else on the menu.
I settled up the bill on the way back to my room, as I had a transfer coming to collect me at 5,15am tomorrow morning for my 6.55am flight. It was then time to hit the bags and repack for airline travel. I am going to have to get good at this as I pretty much have a flight every week now to getting home where I have been used to truck travel and having the luxury of spreading my crap out. I now need to be a lean, mean packing machine. I got everything to fit except the lollies I bought in Peru 3 months ago, the wafers I bought last week in Colombia and the biscuits that I bought in Venezuela also didn’t make the cut for me to be able to fit in the Easter Island statues. As you can guess these were remnants of my snack bag that I bought with me off Rosita when I left in the hope that I would want to eat them, but I just couldn’t keep carrying them, so I have left them for the cleaning lady. I also finished a book which I try and keep them to do a book swap along the way, but no room, and the towel that I stole (well I forfeited my 2.50AUD deposit) from Taganga was also left on the proviso that I would no longer need to supply my own now. I am no longer camping now you know!!! There are probably 2 shirts that are starting to get a few small holes in them, but the green one specially is like a favorite and it one of the ‘original’ shirts that came from home 13 months ago, so sentimentality saved it through this cull. I really am scrapping for space and with my last weeks in the USA where things are cheap anyway and the Aussie dollar still doing okay (I think) I am going to need to rethink my space. I will either need to send another package home, or I suck it up and buy another bag to check-in (I’m allowed to have 2) or a look at another piece of hand luggage and re-shuffle things around. Oh the dramas of air travel, but I am on 11 flights in the next 6 weeks (8 of them in the USA-security sensitive) I am going to need to have room to take out laptops and liquids and the way my backpack is currently packed I can’t move a single thing in there. I am sure I will be able to buy a bag in Barbados, but I need to put on my thinking cap. These are the day to day decisions I am making at the moment so I can’t complain either way. But tonight I got the job done-just.
So goodnight to Easter Island. You were magnificent, awe inspiring, amazing, mythical and enchanting. It was definitely worth the time and effort to come out to the most remote inhabitable island in the world and if you ever come to South America you have to come to this captivating island.
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