Moving from place to place, from country to country without a fixed itinerary and time restrictions has its advantages, but it can also add some stress as you would need to plan at the last-minute where you are going to sleep next and what are the things you could do at the next destination. While in Santiago de Chile, we spent the last few days frantically trying to find a hotel in the remote Easter Island that is not exorbitant (preferably below the US$1000/night charged by some) and has internet access. What’s more, many hotels don’t reply to emails promptly due to the instability of internet service on the island. So we tried calling up the short-listed places instead of waiting around for some emails that never arrived, but then Easter Island being Easter Island, being the most remote island in the whole planet, we even had problems calling Easter Island from our hotel.

So we went to several locutorios - shops that have phone booths - down the street from our hotel to try our luck at calling. The first few that we went to couldn’t connect to Easter Island; luckily one did and we could call the hotels. After a few phone calls with different people answering the phone and a day or two before flying, we confirmed our booking with the Easter Island hotel over the phone in a Chilean locutorio. This would turn out to be one of the most troublesome ways of booking our accommodation during our round-the-world adventure.

9 April 2008 - The day we arrived on Easter Island. Our ‘hotel’ is the Hotel Manutara, which is more like a guesthouse. One thing you must know is that standards in Easter Island are different from those in other developed parts of the world. While this hotel would have been a one-star in other developed countries, we would rate this a four-star by Rapa Nui standards.

During our first night and day at Hotel Manutara, we experienced our first-ever electric shocks from the running tap water. At first we thought it was our imagination, but then it became obvious they were electric shocks! The owner himself worked through the night to fix the electrical problem, so that’s commendable. We had just landed on Easter Island from Santiago at night, so we naturally weren’t pleased with not having running water to use. Luckily we brought along a few big bottles of mineral water in our luggage from Chile for unforeseen circumstances like this, and used them for brushing. (We would use mineral water for brushing everyday while there.)

Needless to say, we didn’t take a shower that night.

The room was spacious but sparsely furnished. There was a small TV hanging at an odd angle near the ceiling and none of the channels seemed to work, but that’s not a problem. Who comes to Easter Island to watch TV? Internet access in the room was via dial-up, and was one of the slowest on our whole trip. Every time we wanted to use the internet, we had to ask the owner to turn on his computer before we could use the internet.

We would find plenty of creepy crawlies in the bathtub throughout the day every day, a few dead cockroaches in the corner of the ‘balcony’ door. We also saw a centipede on the floor once. Remember, this is Easter Island. Would we stay there again? Yes we would, because by the island’s standards, this would be considered a decent place to stay in.

In Hotel Manutara

This cafe serves the best empanadas we’ve ever eaten! They are deep-fried puffs filled with various fillings such as fish, cheese, mushrooms or beef. Yum!

We did our laundry here. It goes by weight, not per article basis.

 

One of the things to see on Isla de Pascua is the Te Pito O Te Henua, which is a perfectly rounded stone that the ancient Rapa Nui believed to be the navel or belly-button of the world. The word “pito” means navel, uterus, center, and “henua” means earth, universe, territory.

We drove to get to this site

 Someone fishing nearby

 Local kids trying to catch some fish too

 Here is the ancient magical place

 Looking at the round stone

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Chile, Easter Island. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.