Some Days Ya Just Can't Find Anything New to Say...

So here's a "reprint" from my website about my day on Easter Island.  Enjoy!

 

Cruise of a Lifetime!

Around the World in 112 Days!

Easter Island

Scheduled for February 10, 2012

Actually February 11, 2012

Am anxiously awaiting daylight so I can go ashore here on Easter Island. We have to "tender" which means we could not dock the ship and have to have smaller boats take us from the ship to shore. The tour excursions get first priority on the tenders, then those of us who have not paid extra money to be taken around are allowed off. Based on my experiences with Louisa in Mexico and Peru, I prefer to see the statues by myself. The island is quite small, so I think I will be able to walk to at least one site from where we dock. But it is still dark, so am not sure. Will be excited to see how well the statues show up from the ship!
They are just announcing that the tender operations will be delayed yet again. We are not tendered in the expected location because of swells making it somewhat unsafe. (The average age of passengers on this ship is 72 years old!) So we are anchored in a different location where the swells are less, but apparently they are still extensive. On top of that, when we get shoreside, we will have to exit the tender onto a floating dock. Negotiate the floating dock until we can get to a fixed dock and thence to land.

Easter Island from the Ship

Well, that was all I wrote before actually getting ashore. It turned out to be somewhat inaccurate. We boarded a tender here at the ship and sailed towards this beautiful beach. [There is a row of statues at the top of the beach, but this picture is too small to show them.] At the beach end, there were stairs which had a small floating platform. Tied to the floating platform was one tender. Tied to that was another tender. The actual travelling tenders tied up to the outermost tender. So we had 3 dicey transfers to make before reaching solid ground. The delay in getting tender operations started was because all of this tying up had to be accomplished in the dark! The sun had not risen by the time we anchored off the island and because we needed to leave rather early to make our next port of call they were trying to get us ashore as quickly as possible.

There had been several announcements about this arrangement, urging those who had mobility challenges not to attempt it and those announcements appeared to have worked. At least I did not observe anyone with a walking aid board any tenders. Nor did I see anyone with a walking aid on the island. Although I did hear one person complain bitterly that we ought not to go places with such dangerous conditions. (My own comment to that was that we could have just as easily gotten hit by a car in Rio… (It was not well-received!))

I waited until about 9:30 to go ashore. The weather was still cool and the waves were choppy, but the crossing was uneventful and I took every hand that was held out to me – probably 10 men in all between getting on the tender at the ship and traversing all the tenders on the island.
Although we were on the opposite side of the island from the main town, there were some statues to be seen, with their backs to the water. I had assumed from what little reading I had done that the statues faced the ocean, but this appears not to be the case, which makes one wonder how they came up with the idea that the statues were intended as either sentinels or to warn off potential invaders.

I spent a couple of hours wandering around taking pictures of the statues from various angles. The white décor around the hats appears to have been supplied by birds and probably was not part of the original design. The last is my favorite picture, taken from a rustic bench provided for our resting pleasure. While I sat there I saw many dragon flies, but none settled where I could photograph them.
There were a lot of volcanic looking rocks, plus some other reddish ones. There were thistles and possibly mullein, plus some other "weeds" that were familiar.

After my couple of hours of wandering, I returned to the tender area and came back to the ship. The passage was again not too bad, but the transitions from shore to tender and tender to ship were dicey. As I was finishing my lunch, the captain came on to announce that they were suspending outgoing tender operations as it was becoming too dangerous. What that meant was that no one else was going to be allowed to go ashore. The tenders are still out there because there are people ashore on tours who will have to be returned to the ship. I would imagine that as soon as everyone is back on board we will up anchor and away. (Actually, I'm not sure we are anchored since the thruster under my cabin has been running all day to keep us properly positioned against the wind.)

But I had a great time and was glad I went. I would love to be able to explore more as I only saw the one set of statues, but that just means I have to come back…