Thursday, 16 October – Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
Even with another hour gained to the same time zone as Chicago, the beginning of the breaking of dawn over Easter Island was not evident at 6:30 am. The Southern Cross was however, although it appeared upside down on the Southern horizon. Even alpha and beta Centauri were easily seen despite the very gibbous barely waning moon setting straight ahead over where a few bright lights were indicating this very isolated island’s presence. (This is intended to be poetic. Enjoy.) The sky looked like the Australian flag was indicating distress. Perhaps it knew something.
The view of the arrival to the planned anchorage at Hango Roa, the main town here, was also truly swell. So was the swell. A matter of fact, the swell was 15 to 20 feet and the ship now not underway and the stabilizers retracted to allow the little yellow boat full of Chilean officials to come aboard to have their coffee and check that we were not trying to enter this most western part of their country illegally was greeted by the 3rd deck entry port opened to let them in. What came in was sea water as the huge and very long period swell was listing this 28,253 ton ship 15 to 20 degrees. The little yellow boat turned away and went back to shore as the port was closed and we pulled up the anchor and headed back out to sea. The Captain came on the PA and announced he had a “Plan B”. We then sailed around the island to the north side of the island where a lovely little beach lay, there was no swell, and weather was spectacularly fine, and where the little jetty that would have allowed to easy access to the island had been. The ship’s tender sailed out to where the jetty was a few weeks ago when A HUGE SWELL had taken it away and looked for an alternative access to the land. After a while—time for another little yellow boat to bring the officials who had driven across the island along with a bunch of tour buses—the tender came back and the captain announced that the weather was fine but the tender couldn’t get close enough to shore to bring the guests onto Easter Island after all. So we stayed anchored in this most beautiful cove, took pictures of where the picnic 120 of us had signed up for would have been, and also of the maoi that were on the beach. They looked forlorn as is their wont. (They also have stone topknots. Make of that what you will.) Many of the guests became very feisty and/or downright grumpy about seeing but not “bagging” another “country” (note all the quotes), but some of us were enjoying taking pictures of the huge stone statues like mad and discussing techniques of photoshopping these pictures with the ones we were taking of each other together as well as how to spend the $205 or so the all day tour and picnic now to be refunded would have cost. Note the maoi at the extreme right of the my picture as we were anchored at Honga Roa. The immigration officials left after a few hours of rubber stamping and the captain commenced a slow circuit of the island as the new port lecturer earned his keep (well, as much as ship’s enrichment lecturers earn anything) by giving a narration of all the maoi’s we passed, especially the row of them looking out at the point of rock called Tangariki. He then said that these were only really visible from sea and not easily seen from the $205 tour we had all saved the money from not setting foot on shore. One wag onboard even suggested that seeing hundreds of these “big heads” for 6½ hours might have been a bit much and that it was awfully nice to enjoy being at Easter Island without the hassle of being forcibly hurled into the tender (the swell was smaller but not nonexistent on the north side), without a long bus ride to see even more of these statues, and of not having to worry about eating a possibly lactose laden lunch. Guess who that was. Nevertheless, many of these fairly unpleasant to begin with crowd on this segment of the cruise were having hissy fits (I had found out that a group from the Travelers Century Club were onboard ready to add up this place to their long lists of countries visited), but the dozen or so friends I’ve made on this cruise all seemed to have pretty much the same attitude as I did. We had a great time in this fantastic and very special location and felt we “did” this unbelievable remote and strange place. We agreed that we felt as if we really saw it sufficiently and especially in this great weather. For the record, we are 2237 miles West of continental Chile and 1290 miles east of the next stop of Pitcairn. As I write this the port lecturer is giving a lecture of Pitcairn in the foolish hope that in 3 days we will actually land the tenders there. Even the ship’s brochure says that “few people EVER make it onshore at Pitcairn”. Something about a place called Disaster Hill, I seem to recall. But I’m looking forward to great pictures in another fantastic anchorage there and then the probable mutiny of the Silver Shadow by guests that will echo Fletcher Christian’s event of 1790.
Having a great time. Really. Wish you were here to replace some of the grumps that are actually here. Gotta go. It’s “Ice Cream Social” time on the pool deck. They promised to have some sorbet for me. With nuts and raspberry sauce.
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