Saturday. Best travel day in a long time. Started off the day by hiking to Rano Kau, a crater lake south of the city. On the way, we acquired a family of dogs, including a little puppy only a few weeks old. Everytime we stopped, the puppy stopped. When we started up again, so did she. Peter suggested she was after the peanut butter and banana sandwich in my backpack, so I named the dog Skippy. (Back story: I intended to get jelly at the supermarket to go with my peanut butter, but the only supermarket in town didn´t have jelly. Only three aisles, and one of them was all wine. So I went with bananas instead, which the German thought was disgusting. I made him try it later, and he admitted it was quite delicious. Victory!)
When we arrived at Rano Kau, the scene was impressive. On the other side of the crater was the Orongo ceremonial site, from which you could see a small island out in the ocean. Male members of the birdman cult would swim out to the island (above, left), and the first one to retrieve an egg was declared the Birdman. The distance doesn´t look too far, but it was incredibely windy, and the sea was really rough. When we went to the park rangers office to pay our entrance, the ranger addressed the papa dog by name. We asked if he knew the dogs. He said the papa dog walks up there 2 or 3 times a day with tourists. Then he told us we had to take the dogs back down, otherwise the rangers have to drive them back to town at the end of the day. This was a problem with Skippy, whose little legs were just too tired from the long climb up. So, I put her in my backpack. It was just adorable, I tell you.
After reuniting Skippy with his 8 brothers and sisters, we kept walking. We hoofed it out of the other side of town for more maoi and more ruins. It proved to be a very long walk. Energy we had, but feet we didn´t. We were both having issues with feet, but Peter told me an old German proverb about shared pain being half the pain. I didn´t really feel in any less pain after that.
Eventually we found the village we were looking for next to the skeleton of a dead horse. Another 20 minutes down the road, we found the 7 maoi we were looking for (above, right), although we didn´t see them right away. How we missed 7 huge stone men on the side of the road, I have no idea. Must have been that tired.
We were hoping to hitch a ride back to town, so whenever I heard a car pull up, I started visibly limping. (People on Easter Island are really that friendly. Anytime we pulled out a map, someone was immediately pulling over to ask us if we needed help.) A tour bus pulled over and told us they had two available seats in the back if we wanted a ride, so we hopped on. We assumed their tour was over and they were headed back to town, but they apparently had one stop to make at a volcano. I thought for sure they were going to charge us after that. I felt like a bit of an intruder listening to the guide, so we hung back. But we did find out that the driver, who was wearing a funny headdress and carrying a fancy big stick, was doing so because they belonged to his great-great-great-great grandfather, a former Rapa Nui king. Cool.
When we got back to town, they tried to drop us off at our hostel, but we assured them the city center was sufficient (needed more groceries anyway) and they would not even hear of accepting money for the ride. Somehow, the people on the island are even friendly than Chileans on the mainland.
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