Easter Island

Well, this seems almost too easy.

Having thought about it, regarding my flights as fixed points in time (even if they're flexible in theory, I kind of want to stick to the original time allocation), I either want to go to Easter Island shortly after I first fly into Santiago or before I fly out (to Buenos Aires). Otherwise it makes planning everything else harder, as I have a fixed set of dates in the middle of my otherwise open time window.

And while I would kind of preferred to have gone sooner rather than later (as it would fill in time before going down to Tierra del Fuego, which isn't happening as soon as I'd originally thought because of problems with the ferry I want to take while I'm down there), it looks like I've left it too late to go at any decent kind of price then - expedia.co.uk is showing roughly a grand for flights alone.

So I want to go just before I fly out of Santiago on Wednesday 31st March. Messing around on expedia.co.uk (I should hunt around for cheaper options before I actually book, but I figure this is a good first approximation), it seems that I can fly out from Santiago to Hanga Roa (IPC) on Wednesday 24th March and back on Tuesday 30th March for £370, which isn't too bad. I guess I'd stay in a hotel near Santiago airport that night as I have to fly out at 10:25 the next morning.

That's perhaps slightly too much time there (and maybe leaves me open to the risk of missing my flight on to Buenos Aires if there's a problem flying back from Easter Island to Santiago), but if I fly back on Monday 29th March the only flight leaves Easter Island at 7pm and arrives at Santiago at 2am on Tuesday 30th March. So it's not as if I get an extra 'full' day in Santiago and it's just awkward and stressful all round. I might prefer to fly out on Thursday 25th March, but there don't seem to be any flights then.

So that gives me six nights out there, which should certainly be enough, and it just slots in nicely before I fly on, leaving me as much flexibility to arrange the rest of my time in Chile as possible.

And it seems that hoteltravel.com can book me a room online with no fuss at the apparently fairly nice Taha Tai hotel for $149/night, which is not cheap but isn't the end of the world.

I haven't booked anything yet, I'm going to sleep on it and assume that this is sufficiently far into the future prices and availability won't change in the next day or two. But I'll probably book tomorrow unless I have second thoughts.

If only Tierra del Fuego were this simple...