Off to Easter Island – 17 April.

Early start with another missed hotel breaky. 6:30am pick up by Juvenal and Carolina.

To the airport for our 9:05 five hour flight to Easter Island. Carolina came in and assisted us to print our own bag tags.

We had to complete a registration online and then have all details ready for the PDI (immigration police) back on level two, it was all pretty seamless, and they didn’t want to see the info we had on hand. It’s a bit tricky when you don’t know the system and language barriers don’t help.

We had no wait time at the gate after a 20 minute walk to get to our gate (17b) and then pretty much straight onto the plane – a big one, seated at row 30 with 9 seats across. I had an empty seat beside me which meant Phil and I fluked a spare middle seat. Unfortunately not a window for any of us. We got a reasonable breaky of some fruit, ham and cheese sandwich and some cake.

Watched a couple of movies – The Good Liar – excellent and Amsterdam – which was hard to follow and a bit odd.

Arrived around midday after 5 hour flight, having gained two hours. The back door was opened and we walked off the stairs into a tropical squall of wind and rain.

A fair wait for luggage as it was a big plane and small carousel. Transfer met and shared with one other guy… from Sydney.

Our hotel Altiplanico Rapa Nui, is out of town. We were met by George who explained that due to a bad storm overnight there is no power in the town or out here. So we sat around and had complimentary tea to follow up the welcome juice we received. Nice views out over the Atlantic in a westerly direction. We opted to sit on the balcony and have lunch and a drink while the rain came in very quick squalls. A most delicious purple sweet potato gnocchi.

Later to our room which is up the hill from reception and lazed around while drying our wet shoes, socks and luggage from the downpour. Lazy lazy arvo.

Taxi to downtown to have a look around, a good cuppa coffee at Mana Cafe with a shared alfajore (typical chocky biscuit type thing.)

After checking out the main streets and getting some more cash we found somewhere to eat tea in a hurry to escape from another downpour with a very nice mojito and papa frites con pollo to share.

We sorted out our high finances to replenish Kitty, walked back to town centre, then began the challenge of phoning our cab Jose – lost in translation- but he phoned hotel to clarify where we wanted to be picked up Lol. All good.

Home to shower, relocate scorpions and get to bed. Just to be clear the scorpion was not in our beds! And they are not deadly!