Day 86 February 3rd 2007, Its a Mystery - Santiago to Easter Island, 3700km

Easter Island is one of the most remote place on the planet, The closest place is Chile some 3,700km away to the East.

Perhaps because of its isolation or because of the famous giant stone heads associated with the Island our first impression was one of mystery.

Consisting of just 64sq miles the Island is home to 4,000 residents all of which seem to own at least one car, which you don't need a license to drive. The Island is completely dependant upon tourism, some 64,000 a year, only a small amount of money is made from Tuna and Pineapple exports to Chile.

Some interesting facts about the Island

1. Largest Runway in the Pacific - to facilitate a space shuttle landing

2. The Island houses one of only a few NASA satellite tracking facilities in the South Pacific

Now put your conspiracy hat for a second, are the above for NASA or where they built to keep an eye on the French Nuclear testing in the Pacific, like everything on this Island its a mystery

3. Easter Island is -5GMT however due to its geographic location I believe it should be -7GMT, the island is kept closer to Chilean time for business purposes, its -2 Santiago. The result being that its still dark at 8AM in the Morning

There is only one town on the Island, Hanga Roa which is in the South West corner of the Island. On arriving we found the Island in the middle of a two week annual festival, this year even more extravagant as Easter Island competes to be one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.

As a result the Islands population is close to 10,000 and our hotel owner kindly double booked us and we had to stay in a different hotel closer to the beach. Apparently this was not his fault stating that the Island also runs out of sugar on a regular basis. So for reference it you want to stay somewhere where the owner is not the most arrogant and ignorant person in the world don't stay here Via Mona

(Above a video of the Island taken from one of the Islands Volcano's please excuse the camera work, also if you go back through the blog I have now added videos from the start)

As they say though every cloud has a silver lining and our hotel was opposite a tour company run by an Ozzie called Bill who had lived on the Island for 15 years after working on a film about the Island Rapa Nui . Rapa Nui is the native name of the Island. We were soon booked on a couple of tours later in the week. Bill also owns a hotel on the Island, Tauraa Hotel, we didn't stay there but it looked a lot better than Via Mona.

After an early flight and last nights drinking we were urgently in need of some food, finding a nice restaurant on the beach we ordered ourselves 2 $20 salads. Being an island everything is expensive as it has to be imported hmmmmmmmmmmm so nothing to do with the cost of all the nice new cars on the Island. Being festival time there was a large party in town which meant some great BBQ food (considerably cheaper than the salads) for dinner.

Highlights: Arriving at what seems like such an amazing and interesting place.