Saturday, February 11, 2012 Easter Island–Continued Part II

Our next stop was at Hanga Roa, where there are 3 restored platforms and the only Moai with their eyes inserted.  The more spiritual the person was, the larger the statue. The platforms are burial sites, so you must respect this.  There was one American 2 years ago that climbed on a statue and took a piece of the ear.  He was quarantined in his hotel room for 3 weeks and fined him $17,000 US Dollars.  They could have sent him to prison. The Moai are very sacred.

From here there was a park area with a festival going on.  There was native food and dancing.

Because of the rough sea in the morning, they had to tender us to the opposite side of the island, so originally we were to end in the downtown area, now we were ending out in the country.  We asked the bus driver if he could drop us off and we would find a taxi home.  The guide said a taxi would cost $20 to get us back to the ship.  Here are some pictures of the town.

Can you see the prices on the menu?  5,000 Chilean Peso’s will buy you a bowl of soup and sandwich! The conversion meant it would have cost $10 American dollars. 

Jolly had to stop for a rest outside a store. He sat with a turtle that is made from the same quarry stone as the Moai. Here is their local fire station.

We hired a taxi and had quite an experience.  Since we were not able to port where our map showed, and they didn’t tell us the beach, we had to guess where we were going.  The first taxi driver had a large beer in his taxi, so we hailed another.  The second driver wasn’t sure where we were going, and he doubled the price, but we did get back to the ship in plenty of time.

We miss you all!