Lima to Easter Island: Five Days at Sea & One Landing

 

What an amazing experience.  Easter Island is notorious for dangerous surf and less than a 50% change of actually being able to land.  The Pacific has over 2000 miles in any direction to build up power before crashing on the island's volcanic rock shores.  But on our arrival we were greeted by clam seas and sunny skis with a gentle breeze and a balmy temperature in the 70s.  It was a perfect day for………but I‘m getting ahead of myself.  First we had to get there.

We left Lima with five days of sailing before us to get to Easter Island, some 2000+ miles to the west.  This will be our longest continuous time at sea.  So what do we do?  We have two daily lecture series.  The morning lectures dealt with making your photographs professional and interesting.  You can tell we didn’t attend those.  The afternoon dealt with the geology of the formation and future of the earth. Those were very interesting and gave us some new insights into our planet home.  Both of these series were done by retired experts in the field.  There are also lectures given by passengers who have expertise in an area and wish to share that knowledge.  I’ve signed up for two sessions; one on Angel Flight and one on life planning for retirement.  We have authors, scientists, artist, all types signed up.  Below is our dinner table mate, Mert, giving a lecture on managing self-talk.

It was also time for the football playoffs.  This is the sports bar area setup for those diehard fans.

These was some concern if we were going to be able to receive the footballs games.  In the Caribbean, Mediterranean, even the Baltic, satellite reception is fairly consistent.  But when you get this far south and out of normal travel lanes reception gets difficult.  Satellites have a footprint for reception and most times those footprints overlap and service is continuous.   Here the footprints don’t overlap and we sail in and out of reception.  Also, the line of sight angle is so low to the horizon that our funnels can block it.  As we sailed west our satellite was to the east and we had to sail a zig-zag course to keep our funnel from continuously blocking the signal.  We felt like a convoy ship in WW II avoiding submarines.  But even with all that our reception was largely hit and miss as you can tell by our prolonged silence. 

We also took four Tahitians on board in Lima to help prepare us for arrival in Tahiti.  You can learn to blow the conch shell, play the ukulele, or play the To’ere.  You can also learn Tahitian dance.  This may seen kind of hooky but it really is very interesting and they take it seriously.

Having a long standing interest in Tahiti I established new friendships.

We also hold special interest gatherings.  I had initial gatherings with veterans, pilots, and SCUBA divers.  The veterans meetings have amazing members.  There are WW II and Korea vets.  One entered Tokyo harbor through a minefield in a sub and another flew fighters from aircraft carriers.  Their stories tell of the greatest generation.  On the other hand at our pilots meeting we just sit around and tell stories of lessons learned and funny adventures.  Several are retired airliner pilots and some non-pilots who stop by just to hear the stories.  Our divers meeting starts the planning for our dive schedule.  Rights now we are diving Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora, Cairns, and the Seychelles. There are several other locations we haven’t planned. yet.

Noreen spends time working on some crafts (read jewelry making) and making new friends as below.

Of course we spend time reading, relaxing and meeting with new friends.  And we get a meal or two in now and then.

Some people put pictures of the grandkids on the door,

Some people put up other family members.  The fish means they booked through Cruise Specialists is Seattle.

Sea days aren’t too bad.   The only problem is we need more hours in the day.

The time flies by and we find ourselves at Easter Island.  This is our second visit to EI.  The last time we spent our time with the Moai and history of the island.  This time we visited the local (only) town.  You can see a lot of pictures and information on the Moai and history on our blog from 2011 at XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

This is the landing area in the only port area.  The locals turn their cars into tour taxies for the day.  The tents and tables are selling local wares.

Some folks live on their sail boats on land or sea.  You have to dry your laundry.

When you live on an isolated island you use what you have and improvise.  I doubt that OSHA would like this boat cradle in Fort Lauderdale.

A Moai located in the port area.

The coast line is very rocky as befits a volcanic island with only two places to land.  You can see that even on a calm days the sea still crashes ashore behind Noreen.

We have seen unusual animal activities in our travels such as the cats of Emphasis or the dogs or Pompeii.  Here all the dogs went swimming.  We saw packs of up to six all in the water playing together.  Nothing like a bunch of friendly wet dogs to accent your wardrobe.

Tsunami evacuation is a big item.

You don’t think of Easter Island as a big surfing mecca but they are here.

Along with instruction and rentals.

We found a nice seaside restaurant for a few drinks.

Our menu.  The currency is Chilean.

Unfortunately that is all the pictures of we have of Easter Island.  Remember you can see pictures of the Moai in our earlier blog at the link above.  Noreen and I were having so much fun I forgot to take any more pics.  If I find a fellow traveler with some, I’ll post them.

We are currently docked in Tahiti.  I did two dives today.  Now I’m off to find an intern café and post this entry.  See you soon.