Day 9 - Lima - Santiago - Rapa Nui

The Andes lost in the clouds

Pretty much a day lost in travel.  And lost is an appropriate word.  After Amerigo drops us at the airport, I check my bag in, then we go check my daughter in for her flight home.  Her plane will leave half an hour late (minimum, I think) which makes her miss her connection in Dallas and will add five hours to her trip home.  Rightfully miffed, she still sees me off and I watch her disappear down the hall of Lima Airport.
       For my part, the airline misplaces my bag in Santiago and it takes so long to find it that I have no time to get Chilean pesos.  I leave for Easter Island with my clothes but only Peruvian soles and U.S. dollars, and that’s how I meet Kim.
       There is a huge difference between Peru and Chile.  Not only have we traded Andean flutes for guitars but everything in the Santiago airport feels and looks American or European.  I go from feeling very “blonde” among Incans - with their bronzed complexions, shiny black hair and long straight noses - to being just like everyone else... and far less tall respectively.
       After an omelet on the flight from Lima to Santiago and another on the one on to Easter Island, I’m all egged out.  But the customer service is excellent on these LAN South American flights, no matter how short.  It takes over three hours to reach Santiago and another six almost to Easter Island!  After the first half hour of this last leg, nothing below but the Pacific - or alternately cloud cover.

       We have quite a bit of turbulence on the final approach and I’m glad to see the black volcanic cliffs rise out of the clouds.  Once we touch down, the pilot brakes slowly and uses up the entire strip to stop our 767.  I chalk it up to rain on the tarmac (more on that later).  Out the windows there are no moai yet, but much vegetation, which surprises me after all I’ve heard about the island’s barrenness.

       No one waiting at the airport with my name but there is a  taxi available so...  One problem though:  only those dollars and soles to pay with, no Chilean pesos.  I explain to the driver and when we get to the Hotel Manavai, I run in to ask if the desk could bail me out.
       And that’s how I meet Kim the Whirlwind.  She pays the cab and explains that the owner had me down as supposedly arriving the previous Thursday, so to him I was a “no-show”.  Good thing I have a print-out of my reservation!

       No sooner have I reached the hotel but the skies literally open up.  It rains for hours and hours, as if some celestial tap were left running by a careless god, or his heavenly bathtub were overflowing.  I cringe at the possibility of having to visit the island in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin.  Not my idea of a tropical paradise.  So I say a silent prayer to whoever the local rain god is and hope for the best.
       The downpour does give me the opportunity to have a long and fun conversation with Kim though. Over a cup of tea she brews us, she tells me about her years on the island, and schedules me for two days worth of tours with Hugo.  The second wonderful thing she’s done for me already.
       Around dinner time, Kim hands me an umbrella and lends me her sweet tween son to show me where I can buy something to eat.  (No restaurant in this hotel; only breakfasts.)  A bottle of water and another of Chilean red wine from the small supermercado.  Next door to it a man is grilling over a big barbecue and it smells wonderful!  So I get a grilled kebab of cerdo (pork), sausage and onion to take back to the hotel.
       Then it’s bed after this past night spent in planes.  The moai will still be there tomorrow.

P.S.  I learn on the next morning’s tour that the airport was lengthened to almost 4 km by NASA as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle, just in case.  Never had to be used for that, luckily, but the Concorde supersonic jet landed there twice.

No longer barren, Rapa Nui has come back from the edge of extinction