Easter Island AKA Isle de Pascal AKA Ile de Paques AKA Rapa Nui

May 7, 2007, 12:30pm

I’m on Easter Island!

Let me repeat that.

I’m on Easter Fricking Island!!!

Easter Island is everything Tahiti is not. Few tourists. Few people. Reasonable humidity. Isolated. Cheap. Clean.

I’m staying at a guesthouse called Chez Cecilia run by a woman named, you guessed it, Cecilia. The price is very reasonable and if I wanted, I could even get something much cheaper. This room however has a table and a kitchen and the price is still well in range of what I’m looking for. I think the most you could pay here is about $ 100 a night.

Unlike Tahiti whose currency is pegged to the Euro, the Chilean Peso is pretty much worthless so you can get really good deals here. Moreover, people coming to look at big stone heads is pretty much the only game in town, so the people are very nice.

I’m also extremely tired. I only got a few hours of sleep last night on the plane. I have about a week here, so I think I’ll pass on the sightseeing today and just rest and wash my clothes.

I’ll have lots of time for doing video editing this week as well as writing updates. I have electricity but no full time internet, so I’ll have to transfer everything to a USB drive and upload it in “town” at the internet cafe.

For the first time in a few weeks I’m wearing a long sleeve shirt, long pants and socks. It actually feels good. I’m developing the mother of al farmer tans. I’m pulling a reverse Michael Jackson where all my exposed parts are brown and my torso is white. I’ll try to even that out back on Tahiti.

6pm

Oh man. I spent the first half day on Easter Island sleeping. I’ll probably sleep a ton tonight too. I’ve eaten no food today. None.

7pm

Damn. I might have some problems. My card isn’t working at the ATM on the island. I don’t think it’s on the right ATM network. I also got to the bank too late to convert my currency. This means I have no way to purchase food as of right now. I have enough cash to cover most of my room, and I have a bunch of Pacific Francs, but I have no idea what the exchange rate will be to Chilean Pesos.

Talking to the lady that owns the place, I think that I should be OK if I can use the debit card. I read that most places here don’t like to accept credit cards because it takes so long for them to process. They might have upgraded their infrastructure since the information I read was written.

I think I might just have to tough it out tonight and go without food. I’m not really hungry and I get breakfast here.

11:30pm

I managed to get some food. Turns out most restaurants do take US dollars at a 500-1 exchange rate. I’ll get Pesos tomorrow. It was confusing at first because the symbol they use for Peso is the same as for dollars: $. I’m glad the Yen, Pound, and Euro all have different symbols. There is no ambiguity when you see it.

Its been raining non-stop since I’ve been here. The room I’m in has a metal roof, so every raindrop sounds like 20 raindrops. If you just saw a photo, you’d swear it was colder here than it is. There are no trees outside of the village, so it looks like tundra and its very overcast and rainy. You’d think it was one of the Aleutian islands. It is cooler here than Tahiti and Hawaii, but that is due to the Humbolt current on this side of the Pacific south of the equator. I am a bit farther south than Hawaii is north, but not so much that it will make it cold.

I’ve taken the time tonight to burn the photos I’ve taken so far to DVD. That freed up a bunch of space on my hard drive. I’ll probably try and clear out a couple more gigs of music to make room for video. I’ll try to send out the DVD in my next package of stuff.