On-the-Road Tales

The only part of the island I had not yet explored was the north, so I walked up past Tahai. I stayed along the coast with a bit of a breeze so it was much more comfortable than other parts of the island I had hiked. It was completely deserted, it is hard to comprehend that you have this immense island but everyone is concentrated in one tiny town. (see erin’s brief history for that explanation) I visited some more Moai, checked out some wildlife, stared down from the cliffs at the crazy rough sea beating the rocks below. There are all sorts of caves formed from Lava tubes on the island. Some have as many as 8 entrances and end up looking out like windows onto the sea. These proved to be vital places since the population would escape into them to evade capture when pirates or slave ships would try and raid the island. Since there were openings above in the land, they were able to grow plants and vegetables in this environment as well. Tried to find some coast lookouts on my map, again with limited success but I was just exploring as it was. One of the three cars that passed me on the dirt road during my 5 hour trek, offered a ride. I declined but it was a nice gesture in the event I was dehydrated and lost like the other day!

I stopped back into town to do some last minute errands. Had to swing by the post office to get my passport stamped. Since it is still Chile, there was no official passport stamp but – – the PO will put a cool semi-offical Moai head stamp. Don alerted me to this in Machu Picchu where I did it too! Silly yes but travelers get off on these things – so how many stamps and visas do you have??? Watched the sunset once again. Everyday the clouds and colours are just that bit different.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.