Easter Island was not on my original plan for this trip. I hadn't thought about flying out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and spending a few days on the island. But the more I thought about it and the more I looked at the flights, the more the idea grew on me. The things that finally pushed the decision was the fact that the business class tickets were affordable! And item number 5 on my bucket list is fly business class. Sold!

And this was a Dreamliner which was pretty exciting too! There are no window blinds... They just dim automatically when it's sunny outside or when it's time to sleep!

But I'm glad my plan changed!

This was the view from the plane taking off from Santiago, just as we passed through the clouds (and before my window self-dimmed) of the Andes peaking through the cloud cover.

The island is beautiful.

The day I arrived I just wandered around the only town on the island, Hanga Roa. The island survives on tourism so it was no surprise that all of the shops were selling souvenirs. From the place I was staying, it was a 3 minute walk to the coast. There is a small harbour where the tourist boats leave and dotted around here I found my first Moai statues.

The second day I headed out for a walk. A lot of the area around the town can be reached by foot. I set out with a route in mind. Turned out it was way too ambitious and I cut it short and after an hour and a half of walking and only getting a small fraction of the route done, I headed back into town.

And to the beach! Well that may be over exaggerating it a bit... It was more like a small patch of sand next to the ocean.

I spent some time here watching people and the various boats go by. One in particular looked very interesting. It looked like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. The next day I was speaking to 2 American ladies who said it was a Naval training ship that they had looked around. It was on a training mission and when I saw it it was heading for Hawaii. The don't use electronic navigation but do everything the old fashioned way, with paper maps and using the sun and stars to know their position.

After a while at the beach and when it was getting close to sunset time, I headed to THE best place on the island for sunsets. There I waited an hour and a half for the sun to set. However, the clouds didn't feel like cooperating and there wasn't much of a sunset. Fortunately, I got this pretty cool photo of the sun rays shining through openings in the clouds. So it wasn't a completely failed mission.

The next day I rented a jeep so I could explore the whole island. I pretty much saw every Moai statue, rock carving, quarry and beach.

My last day I spent wandering about. The weather wasn't fantastic and was raining every other hour so I didn't venture far. I did walk up to the airport to see the Dreamliner land.

Turns out I'm a bit of a plane spotter... Then it was back to the mainland and time to hatch a plan how I can get a free upgrade on my flight home...