Day 22 : Easter Island - Living like the Idle Rich in the Hotel Altiplanico

Friday March 3^rd, 2017:

We are now on Easter Island, learning to live like the idle rich, it seems. It is also very green, and very muggy!

We were up at 6 AM in Santiago, Chile, and had a 5-6 hour flight some 3 hours later after spending over 2 hours queuing. The Chilean way seems to be to make queuing as long as possible: even when our documents had been checked by the immigration police, they were immediately checked by security, and then again by the stewardesses before we board, at least twice. This redundancy is itself a form of heightened security! Collecting baggage is another interminable waiting game.

Easter Island - green and showery, looking across the airport to Hanga Roa

As we flew into Easter Island I was surprised at how green it was! Yes, we were still used to the greyness of Antarctica, but when I’d looked at Easter Island on Google Earth some time ago it looked very dry. Perhaps I should have been surprised at that!

First a few comments about Easter Island, or Rapa Nui to give it its native name. At a latitude of about 27°S it is technically not quite tropical, but it sure felt it! It is one of the most remote inhabited islands. Its nearest neighbour, Pitcairn Island, is 2000 kilometres away and has about 50 residents. Easter Island was probably settled by Polynesians between 700 and 1100 years ago. Its population peaked at an estimated 15,000 people in the 1600s. By the arrival of the first Europeans in the 1770s it had dropped to 2,000–3,000, and was then decimated by slave raiding and European diseases to 111 in 1877. Its population is now about 5,800, with 60% being descendants of the original Rapa Nui people.

Easter Island is renowned for its stone statues or moai, and other cultural features such as the stone platforms, or ahu, many of which support moai. Because of these, Easter Island is now a World Heritage site. And it was the moai and the associated legend of the Rapa Nui people that brought us to Easter Island – and I’ll write about that in another entry. Tourism is indeed the main source of income for the island. The hinterland is grazing country, but I doubt there’d be much export.

Grazing land dominates the interior of Easter Island

The Easter Island airport building was quite low-key and unpretentious: a low sprawling building with the outside penetrating the deeply shaded inside. We were greeted by a representative of the company who were providing our tours, and adorned with leis of fresh tropical flowers. This was a real novelty, and made it clear that we were really in Polynesia, not South America!

Our Hotel was the “Hotel Altiplanico Isla de Pascua”. Our guide drove us there through the main township, Hanga Roa, and then out into the country a bit. Hanga Roa looked very rural and “laid back”. The resorts and hotels, civic structures, shops and service buildings seemed very low key, the streets were narrow and winding, and many were gravel.

Main street in Hanga Roa

We arrived at the Altiplanico mid-afternoon with nothing planned until the following morning. It was about 3.5 km to walk back to the town, but far too hot and muggy! Besides, we were both very flu ridden – with what I was calling the “penguin flu” as we picked it up on the Polar Pioneer in Antarctica. So, we rested in and around our cabin and the hotel’s swimming pool, and tried to settle into the life of luxury of the idle rich.

Cabins of the Hotel Altiplanico Communal lounge Office and dining block at dusk The roof trusses – beautiful work!

I quickly got the impression that the Altiplanico was probably one of the most up-market places to stay on the island! However, it was not pretentious. To the contrary, there was a simplicity about it that made it an easy place to stay, yet there was clearly an air of excellence about their service, and an expectation that excellent service was to be expected, that made me feel uncomfortable or out of my element!

The other clientele at the Altiplanico were similarly aging and retired as we, yet I longed for the more vibrant and younger culture of the Polar Pioneer and EcoCamp Patagonia. No doubt the isolation from the younger riff-raff staying down in Hanga Roa was part of the marketing appeal of the Altiplanico. When we booked, I simply took the default option; maybe I should have done more homework!

On the other hand it was an attractive place, and certainly peaceful. The accommodation was described as being a “traditional boathouse-style hotel”, and I still don’t know what that means! What we found were individual cottages in a garden of tropical flowers and small trees on a gentle west-facing slope uphill from a communal building with offices, kitchen and dining rooms and a communal lounge, and a small swimming pool.

Garden and cabins Tropical flowers in abundance! Early morning views down to Hanga Roa and into the hinterland The sun catching palm fronds

Each cottage had a bedroom, with toilet and bathroom off to one side, and large wall-to-ceiling sliding glass doors facing west with a view over the main building down to the ocean. There was no air-conditioning, but thankfully there was a ceiling fan, and our poorly state meant we spent a fair amount of our free time in our room with the fan on enjoying the view over the ocean!

Although they were not meant to be part of the scene, on a couple of mornings we woke to find horses wandering around outside, and piles of horse poo on our path! Otherwise, wildlife of any kind was few and far between.

Our bedroom with cupboards and mosquito nets - which we didn’t need Our bathroom – it also had a shower and toilet

Breakfasts were provided, and encompassed fruit, cereals and cooked meals – in other words, the works – and apart from the weird Chilean yoghurt, they were good! Lunch and dinner were available in-house, but were not cheap. US$30 seemed to be the standard for a main course; I guess us residents out here far from Hanga Roa were a captive audience!

The breakfast bar – lots of choice, plus cooked options!

I was not impressed with the evening meals: for one thing they were not particularly “Krista friendly”, and maybe my general distaste for the style of food was because I was sick. For our last two meals, when we were feeling really poorly, we managed to persuade them to provide us with boiled rice and fruit salad – which were great! However, there were three good things about the evening meals: a lovely, caring Rapa Nui waitress; what I assume was traditional Rapa Nui music playing in the background; and some awesome sunsets.

The sunsets were a real source of delight and awe!

On our last day checkout was 10 AM but our plane was due to leave around midnight! For a half day’s rent we could access our room until 8 PM. As the hotel was not booked out, this was of course more profit for them! Anyway, this was very much appreciated by us as we could then rest up from the hot afternoon, shower and leave reasonably fresh!

Sunset on our last day

When we departed, the receptionist presented us each with beautiful, locally made shell necklaces, reminiscent of those made by the Tasmanian indigenous women. We were very touched!