So my "family" (Chaz, Jacob, Leah) and I went to Easter Island! I stayed over at Leah's apartment since we were leaving so early in the morning and helped her pack. We slept for a few hours and got up at 4am, walked a couple blocks and got on the transfer bus that would take us to Santiago and straight to the airport. We arrived at the airport, checked in and waited. We snacked on free chocolate samples in the stores and I bought a super expensive bottle of water (like $7!!!). We got on our LAN flight at about 8am on Friday morning and I was quite impressed! The seats were pretty comfy with decent amount of leg room and each seat had a tv screen on the back. We could watch movies (47 choices, including new movies like Invictus and Sherlock Holmes), tv shows, play games, or create playlists and listen to music! I spent my first part of the trip watching Sherlock Holmes and eating the delicious meal we got! I slept some and waited around to get there! We flew in and what a sight it was! We flew around basically the whole island before landing and it was really cool!!!
We got off the plane and went to collect our baggage. I stood guard of some stuff while Jacob looked for our check bags and Leah and Chaz went to find somewhere for us to stay! We had a few names of people who were supposed to be good and eventually got a residencia (kinda like staying in someone's house) with a nice lady named Teresa. She even gave Leah and I leis! ^_^ We then hopped in a couple of taxis with our bags and headed for our home. The weather was absolutely beautiful with the sun, that we had all been missing, shining brightly and a warm gentle breeze. We spent the next few hours getting settled in the taking a walk toward the water to take in the view. At around sunset we got to our first moai (the famous Easter Island heads) and took tons of pictures of the sun setting behind the heads. We headed back home and cooked up one of our first, of many, pasta dinners! This was also the time when we first realized that Teresa, the caretaker of the house, was a little batty. But still a nice lady.
The next day we rented a jeep for 24 hours. We planned to rent ATVs but only Jacob had his driver's license with so we ended up with a jeep instead. The jeep turned out to be really fun because we were all in the same car and could listen to music (there were only 3 radio channels on the island, one played really good rocking music though!)! We spent most of the day driving around the island, getting out and looking at moai and taking lots of pictures! By late afternoon we ended up at Anakena, a really nice white sandy beach. It is in a bay so there weren't even large waves to attack us and the water was so clear that we could be at least 10 feet out and still see the bottom! It was beautiful! Of course we couldn't resist going in and spent a little while there before we decided to head back before the sun set. We spent another evening watching the sun set behind moai and taking lots of pictures. That evening we drove around looking for a club after eating pasta but couldn't really find anything. We stopped and a couple people got drinks and sushi before we headed home to sleep.
Sunday we drove up to a volcano, which is now a lakey-swamp in the bottom in the morning then returned the car and took a taxi back to Anakena to have a beach day! It was gorgeous and I even got a slight tan! Though I'm sure it has already faded away! ^_^ It was such a relaxing day!!! We watched the sunset from the beach though there were rocks in the way and it wasn't as cool as the other days.
Monday we got up with plans to go scuba diving but the waves were too big and it got cancelled. We then decided to rent a jeep for another 24 hours and spend more time exploring the island, possibly ending up at the beach. We drove along and climbed through some sweet lava tubes, as close to splunking/caving I've ever been! ^_^ The view of the water was so great, from in the tubes and out. The water was this indescribable fantastic range of blues that was simply exquisite! We visited some more moai, met a "semi-pro" photographer... (haha, crazy lady carrying about 7 cameras with her!) and headed back to Te Pito Kura (a place with an "energy rock") to eat lunch. As we were eating lunch some smashed a rock through our car window and stole our bags we had left in the car. Yes, this was horrible, especially being that my camera was in the bag I left along with the 700+ photos I had taken over the weekend. This was and is completely terrible... We just hadn't seen anyone for a while and had been feeling safe on the island. The next few hours were a blur for me as I was crying most of the time and we took some pictures of the scene, cleaned the glass off the driver's seat and drove to the police station where we filed a report. Unfortunately this doesn't happen much so this all took a long time. Also there is no real insurance on the island so we had to pay for the broken window... We woke up early on Tuesday morning to see if anyone had ditched the stuff they didn't want from our stuff but couldn't find anything.
So currently I have to pictures to share (we will be doing a picture exchange, but I'll never really have my photos back) and had to buy new glasses (my lovely orange ones got stolen) and I lost a tie-dye, some underware, a bra, a black bandana, my red and white striped umbrella, and my "to kill a mockingbird" bag... losing all these things made me really sad and I still hope that someone could at least return my memory card though I don't have much hope. I got lucky before, maybe some good person will show up again.
<3Annie
