Easter Island: Feet, Bike, and Automobile.
I headed to Easter Island for a week of vacation last week. Ever since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to see the mysterious island as it was super popular with hippies and the green movement when I was a kid, plus the mystery of the giant heads. The theories when I was little all reflected things like the dangers of over population, war between people, and environmental abuse. Turns out most of that is bullshit. It was a combination of rats and white people that really caused a lot of change (which seems to be a pretty common reason, fracking white people). Oh and Easter Island is the most remote inhabited island in the world, it is basically 1,200 miles from anything.
On the way down I read the book The Statues that Walked which was a good overall picture and history of the the island. The biggest surprise on arriving is that it looks very similar to the Hawaiian islands, for some reason I was expecting some bleak desert. And after reading the book turns out everything was pretty normal on this island, the trees disappeared because rats ate all the nuts (hah), and the people built the statues cause they wanted too (and prob a good mechanism for population control is the theory). Unfortunately when visitors found the island for the first time diseases totally destroyed the native population, like most of the new world. And this kept happening, the natives really liked hats and sailors traded hats for women, and so STDs spread like crazy (does not currently work unfortunately, or fortunately).
The island as you can see is absolutely beautiful. The first day I was there I did a massive 18 mile run plus 6 mile hike along the coast. Next day I did a massive bike ride around the entire island. And I swam both days as the water was cool but not too bad. Unfortunately on day three I woke up with flu/cold and spent the next three days just in town reading or sleeping. Finally on my last day I rented a car and drove around exploring some more. And now I’m back in Santiago, and head to Australia really soon.
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