I washed some underwear in the sink maybe three days ago. The damn stuff still isn't dry. How the hell is that possible? Desert expeditions should just take damp underwear with them instead of carting great quantities of liquid water about.
Mon, 7:25pm. After the usual struggle to get up, including the now semi-customary attempt of the cleaner to get in, I left the hotel about 11am. I walked over to Rano Kao. The route was easy to find but it seemed a hell of a long way and most of it was uphill. I did hope to record how far I walked, but my GPS played up. My pedometer tells me (fairly reliably I think) I did a bit over 4h's "aerobic" (which I interpret as 'fairly continuous and moderately fast', based on experience, despite the description in the manual) walking in total today. That includes maybe 30-60 minutes walking between the hotel and town, assuming that was continuous enough to be included.
The trail comes out at a viewpoint we had stopped at on the tour yesterday. Just before I got to the top I saw the first person I'd seen since leaving the road, and it turned out to be a Canadian guy I had met on the first two days I was on the tour. (I have subsequently seen, but not spoken to him, twice more today.) He was just coming back - he had walked round the right side of the crater already when I first met him, and had been walking round the less advertised left side.
There were about three other people just behind him, then I saw no one else until I was just leaving to go back into town, so I had the place pretty much to myself, which was cool. There was a solitary cow on the left hand trail around the crater, which kept mooing before I saw it, but I think it was scared of me and after it being in sight for maybe five minutes it disappeared and I neither saw nor heard it again.
There was quite a bit of wind and not too much sun as I walked up to the viewpoint but it was still quite warm and I was glad of the wind. I did the walk round the right side of the crater and encountered some quite fierce winds, presumably due to lack of shelter. You can't walk all the way round, apart from anything else there is a big 'bite' out of the crater on the sea-side. So I doubled back to the top of the trail and did the much longer and less advertised walk round the left side, as far as I was allowed. Bits of this path seemed decidedly close to the sloping edge, but fortunately the wind seemed to die down and it was OK. I couldn't get right round to the 'bite' as there were signs saying (in English and Spanish)'falling cliffs' and 'you have approached a dangerous zone' (yeah, I approached it because a) no earlier signs told me not to and b) I wanted to read this sign). Apparently there were some mass rockfalls in 2007.
The crater is 1.6km in diameter and 200m deep, the lagoon in the bottom is 12m deep. (I may have given mangled figures yesterday, I believe these are correct as they came from signs around the crater.) It is covered in floating reeds which according to one information board I saw can be walked on in places. That would be so cool, but you are not allowed inside the crater at all, let alone onto the surface of the lake.
Simple mathematics says that it would be a 5km walk around the circumference of the crater. I must have done at least that (even ignoring the walk up there and back), since although I couldn't walk the complete circumference I did the bit I could twice (out, can't go further, back). And especially on the left side (I use these terms relative to the path up to the viewpoint) the path frequently strays away from the crater rim (while, as noted, at a few points coming perilously close), which must increase the distance. I might guess I did about 7-8km around the rim. And maybe about 4km each way up and down. (My GPS got up to about 4km before it turned itself off.)
Even the walk back down the trail was exhausting, I was knackered by this point and although it was downhill it seemed to take ages. The path was hard enough and steep enough that I couldn't let gravity just take me as it hurt my knees to walk at that speed. I could hardly believe I'd walked up the damn thing as I was coming down.
I walked past the cave with the birdman paintings we saw on the tour yesterday on the way out to the viewpoint and back, but on the way out I wanted to get a move on and on the way back I was too knackered and figured I'd already seen it and it just wasn't that cool. (Similarly, I could have gone a tiny bit further than I did on the right hand trail and continued on to Orongo, but having already seen that and wanting to do the left side I turned back as the path veered away from the crater edge.)
Anyway, all pretty cool if tiring. I am struck that a lot of the time I wasn't looking at the crater as I was concentrating on the path and feeling a bit knackered. I mean, I did keep looking at the thing and took loads of photos, but even so. This does make me think about the business of hiking round Torres del Paine national park. I imagine you feel more 'there', but you perhaps don't appreciate the scenery in the same way I did going round on a bus tour. I'm sure you do get to appreciate it, but you must also look at stuff and think "hell, I've got to walk over/around that bugger to get to the next place" :-). I'm quite glad I got both variations on Rano Kao. It was probably cooler today to be there on my own spending loads of time, but maybe there was something to be said for the 'easy access' of the tour.
I think I've made a reasonable stab at seeing stuff here. For what it's worth, I don't think I've seen a moai today or yesterday (maybe there was a knocked down one of the tour yesterday, but I am not so sure). But (to quote one of the guide books) I "spent some time alone with the moai" on my first day here, and I'm glad I went back to Rano Kao today.
(Well, there are pseudo-moai all over the place, including a couple on the road the hotel is on next to the airport, but for all I know they are modern variations. They don't really look like the real things, and even if they are they don't have the same kind of setting.)
Oh, I had a quick look at my e-book earlier. I had noticed a while ago a sort of 'crosshair' formed on the screen by a couple of non-functioning rows and columns of pixels, it now has more. I find this a bit crap. I mean, I'm not treating it with kid gloves, but it has been fairly reasonably packed in my hand luggage most of the time. My laptop is fine having been treated exactly the same, although it arguably has a thicker case, and of course it's diferent display technology. I think the display is still readable (the battery appears to be nearly dead, so I didn't look at it for long) if a bit crap. This may give me an excuse to get a new improved model in a few months' time, but I know this one wasn't cheap and it's a bit of a pisser it's so un-robust.
Mon 8pm. I was a bit concerned earlier that when I check out they might ask me to pay, which I think I already did when I booked. But I just looked back over my notes of what I've spent and I can see I made a note about paying for the flights but not that I paid for the hotel. But I could swear I did. They kept the voucher I'd printed out when I checked in so I can no longer examine it. I hope the wifi will be working again tonight so I can check, but I am not overly optimistic. (There was a guy fiddling with cables in a trench when I got back about 4pm though, which may or may not be related to the wifi/internet problem at the hotel.) I suppose if I can't check I will just have to see what they say when I check out and if push comes to shove pay again and try to reclaim the extra payment when I'm back in the UK. That sounds really awkward though, but fingers crossed it will be OK.
Not really looking forward to tomorrow or most of the day after. Although I fly at 1pm tomorrow I have to check out by 10am and so will just end up sat at the airport all morning, then on a plane, then I have to drag myself over to the centre of Santiago. I don't expect to get to the hostel (I have the cheapest I could find, as it's such a brief stay, from memory it's about GBP14 with a shared bathroom) til 9pm or maybe 10pm, then although I may go out regardless, I have to be out by about 8am since I must be at the airport by 10am, then I have the flight to Buenos Aires. There won't really be anything except pure travelling until mid-late afternoon on Wednesday. (I can imagine I will end up going out for a couple of beers tomorrow night, even though I probably ought to take the opportunity to have a night completely off. We will see I guess. Even if I do it's still a bit crap.)
It occurred to me it might almost have been better to spend the night at Santiago airport. But I've never done that before and it would be well over 12h there. More to the point, nowadays the airport isn't 'normal' (the functioning bits all being in tents in the car park) and I doubt you can really stay there overnight even if you want to.
Oh, I am down at Tavake again. I ate here, I was going to eat at Aringa Ora but it looks like it's shut today (I passed it about 6:15pm and it was shut, it was shut at 3:30pm-ish when I got back from the walk tho I assumed that was just the afternoon, but I was eating there by 6pm yesterday so if it was open it should have been open when I passed it tonight.) I brought my key out with me but I don't know how late I will be out.
Mon, 10:30pm. Bit quiet here though the music is still playing, I just went inside to check they were still open and get another beer. The owner (?), who appears to be a man in (relatively unostentatious) drag (seriously - my Bradt guide does mention "the island's token camp bitch" in connection with this bar, presumably referring to him) just spoke to me at my table and said they are open til 1am every night. (I had already been told they were open til 1am when here a few nights ago, but I wasn't sure if that was just at the weekend.) He was nice enough to compliment me on my Spanish. He seems a decent enough chap. (Down, Chubbard/Ives.)
I fear I may have exaggerated the size of the cockroaches here in saying they are two inches long. I haven't a ruler handy, but they may be an inch and a half. Men always exaggerate small measurements in inches I guess. They are comparable to the ones I've seen in Mexico, for what that might be worth.
Not that I have seen any just here tonight, but I am reminded by a smallish flying insect that they have biggish dragonflies here (as, if I didn't say at the time, they do in San Pedro de Atacama). I can't help thinking they are very cool. We probably have them nearly as large in the UK, but I have never seen one there. (I am mainly certain they exist as my Dad found one on the driveway and took a fairly nice picture of it.) They are the hummingbirds of the insect world, I find their ability to hover frankly amazing. Unlike most insects I wish one would land on or near me so I can have a good look, but they never do. If one did I'd doubtless frighten it off trying to get my camera out of my pocket anyway.
A couple has turned up and sat at another table outside, which despite the probable-owner's reassurance about 1am closing is nice. (There was a solitary old bloke sat at a table when I went inside to see if they were still open, I think that's the extent of the custom at present.)
I am vaguely tempted to push it slightly (til midnight, say) tonight. There's no way I'm going to be significantly drunk by then, I don't have to check out til 10am so getting up at 9 (ideally) or 9:30 (in practice, regardless of what time I go to bed) would be fine and give me plenty of sleep, and if I'm slightly tired it can only help me sleep on the plane. I'm already out past close of reception at the hotel anyway. Even if I need to argue about payment tomorrow (which I can't, lacking hard evidence) that can take place after 10am. The airport, as I already bitterly remarked, is 450m walk from the hotel and it's an internal flight at 1pm, so there is little danger of a major panic to get to the airport in time.
An Australian woman was talking to the guide on the tour yesterday and said that if she had to leave Australia to live in Buenos Aires or Easter Island, she would come here. (I assume the implication was that she also liked BA and it would be second choice.) While it is undeniably cool to visit, I couldn't imagine living here. I don't think I could handle even a village in the UK, the isolation and (I am imagining at this point, of course) small-town atmosphere of everyone knowing everyone would do my head in. I could vaguely imagine exiling myself in somewhere like Santiago, but despite (and perhaps because) growing up in a small town (even that being about four times the size of Hanga Roa, which has essentially the entire population of the island), I think I'm an urban kind of person. Yeah, it can be a bit unfriendly and lonely in a way, but it seems better than the alternatives.
If I haven't made the observation before, every time I am asked to fill in my details in a hotel or do it voluntarily in a visitor's book, I am reminded of Mark Twain's caustic remarks about Americans filling in such things in the local language. I can never make my mind up if I should write 'British' or 'Britanico' for my nationality, and similarly with my profession. (I never know why they ask for your profession, but they do. Kevin in La Paz told about a guy he met who always wrote 'tourist' for his profession.) I don't do it out of a sense of pretentiousness and on the one hand it fits with my attempts to speak the language, but on the other hand there is Mark Twain sneering from beyond the grave at the back of my mind.
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