Bill and Lynne Grand Tour

Easter Island
Rapa Nui, as the locals call the island, is a volcanic island over 3,000 km from the nearest land. We are staying in a hotel with a spectacular view from our balcony of the waves crashing against the rocks. Each day we take a tour of some of the archeological sites.

Moai
There are nearly 900 moai (statues) on the island most of which are lying on their faces after the wars between the clans. These stone statues are amazing and the effort needed to carve them out of the volcanic rock using stone tools was brought home when we visited the quarry.

Moai Quarry
It evidently took about six months to cut them from the side of the mountain and nobody knows how long to transport them to the platforms at the village. There are any number of theories as to how this was done but I like the one which maintains they walked there. One of Thor Heyerdahl´s engineers showed how this could be done by pulling on ropes from alternate sides to make the 9 meter moai move. The moai were very important as they honored the leaders of the clan without whose protection there would be no harvest or successful fishing. As the centuries went by, the statues became larger and better carved. The largest is unfinished and is over 20 metres long - longer than a cricket pitch. Most of the moai left standing are around the quarry. They carved them and then abandoned them when it became too difficult to move them. War is such a distraction. About 300 have been restored to their platforms. The toppling was necessary to ensure your enemy did not get mana from the gods.

Moai


The birdman cult became popular toward the end of the moai production. The chief of each clan trained his best man to enter a contest which involved swimming through shark-infested waters to a large rock off the island. The aim was to be the man to find the first egg laid by a seabird that season. The winner was made chief for a year and spent it in seclusion in a cave having food brought to him and decreeing what and where things should be planted and organized and, of course, the customary virgin was also delivered. Next year the competition was held again so there could be a different supreme chief of all the clans each year.

The archeologists have done a good job reconstructing the stone houses, ovens, gardens and crematoria. Even the chicken hoops are built of stone and we have enjoyed seeing chicken hawks perched on rocks all over the island looking longingly at the enclosures. They must be genetically imprinted to know there were once chickens there. There are also an incredible number of horses around, which are used for pony trekking and not much else.

We leave on a six hour flight for Tahiti this evening. This will be vastly different from the early journeys by canoe using the stars, evening flight of seabirds and floating seaweed to find land. Our guide assured us they could do the journey to Tahiti in 5 days, which meant the canoes were paddling 800 km per day - a rate we doubt.

LS

San Pedro de Atacama

It was so good to be back in an arid climate. You can take the girl out of South Africa but you cannot take the South African out of the girl. I felt right at home in the Atacama. We joined four van tours in San Pedro de Atacama to see the major attractions of the desert and had a grand time. San Pedro is the mecca for backpackers and extreme sporters - sand boarding down immense sand dunes and mountain biking down sheer rock formations. Quite a few were wandering the streets between the adobe restaurants and shops with bandaged arms and legs.

Flamingo in the Salt Lake

The first day we went out to the salt lake to see the flamingoes and walk over the salt deposits. We saw llama on the way and can now tell the difference between them and alpaca and vicuna. Then we went up to about 13,000 feet to see two lagoons followed by lunch of chicken soup (it included half a chicken each) and pebre which is the closest thing I have eaten to a cornish pasty.

After lunch we visited the oasis of Tocanao. They have an ingenious system of furrows through the town and water is released twice a day to irrigate the fruit trees and vegetable gardens. The water is very "sweet" and the trees are enormous. I coveted the figs, papayas, avocadoes and other fruits. Everything cultivated is locked behind very high fences. Once a year the town comes to a halt and everone spends a week in August clearing the canals. Water is a very valuable commodity. The restaurants are mostly open air and even where they have a covered area, there is always an opening in the thatch for the smoke from the fire to escape. It gets relatively cool at night.

On the last morning we rose at 3 am to drive in the dark for two hours over the worst dirt road ever up to 14,000 feet. Our driver never saw another vehicle he did not need to overtake. That is saying something from someone raised on a farm in the Carlisle Bridge area of the Eastern Cape.


Geyser in the Dark

At dawn we were groping around in the dark with hundreds of other tourists looking at geysers and trying not to fall into a hole or through the crust. The steam from the geysers evaporates after 9:30 am, hence the dawn patrol. We were served breakfast after our guide had submerged a dozen eggs in a plastic bag into one of the geysers and boiled them for six minutes. The largest geyser is called Three Dead Men. I understand this is in memory of the three who went too close to the edge and the crust crumbled. Bill took the final tour to Death Valley in the Valley of the Moon without me as I nobly waited for our laundry to be ready. After I had heard how they had slogged up an enormous sand dune and sat in the sand-blasting wind waiting for the sun to set, I felt I had got the better of the deal.


Atacama Sand Dune

We stayed in a lovely hotel in Santiago waiting for a flight to Easter Island the next day. The hotel was a converted mansion in the heart of the upmarket district and I gorged myself on prickly pears from the local vendors. A few more pips than I was used to, but the genuine flavor.

LS

Our first CD of pictures has reached Young Bill by snail mail. He has very kindly put them on the web for us. You can access them by clicking on LINKS to the left of our blog and checking the photo albums there.

Ushaia

We landed in Ushuaia to the most spectacular scenery - the Beagle Channel surrounded by mountains on both sides. Everything you have heard about Argentinian lamb is true. We chose our first restaurant because, through the window we could see a log fire in the center of the floor with three whole carcases of sheep grilling slowly. I was glad they treated the King Crabs more circumspectly behind closed doors as they are enormous and cover a large part of the table top before being dismembered.

We took a small steam engine to the End of the World in the Tierra del Fuego National Park. The railway was introduced to ferry the logs when the area was still a penal colony. You can see the stumps covering the valleys. Those cut down during the winter are a few feet taller than those cut at ground level during the summer. It shows the depth of the snow. The train ran at 7 kilometers an hour with an English girl giving the commentary and you have time to enjoy everything she described. Bill and I were the only two passengers on the return journey. The others were met by bus at the station and taken on to other sights. I felt like Mrs. J.P. Morgan in my exclusive carrige at the back of the train.


Cape Horn

We embarked on the Mare Australis and sailed down the Beagle Channel to Cape Horn. The weather was remarkably good so the Captain took as around the Horn which was much appreciated. One of the guides had regaled us the evening before with stories of surviving 30 foot waves. Our expeditions on shore were conducted in Zodiacs and it was thrilling to navigate the ice floes right up to the Piloto Glacier and sit watching for chunks of ice to fall off while the nesting cormorants entertained us. Some of the floating chunks were the size of the Zodiac so maybe I was not that disappointed that the big one did not calve while we were there. On the previous excursion two dolphin kept pace in our wake as we returned to the ship. It was a relief to laugh as we had just completed an hour and a half hike up the side of a steep mountain and then sat still and quiet for a few minutes. The silence is total as there are no inhabitants for miles.


Piloto Glacier

On the last morning we rose at six to visit the Magellan Penguin colony. They are as tame as the animals on the Galapagos. We watched them digging furiously at their burrows, pointing their bills skywards while they brayed like donkeys - calling their mate, we understand and gathering kelp and grass to line their nests. The fedglings waited patiently on the beach for mom and dad to return with food.


Penguin Colony

We landed at Punta Arenas, Chile at the end of the Magellan Strait and leave for the Atacama Desert next. The port must have a large British contingent as we had no trouble replacing the 110 volt kettle I had blown on the 230 volt current with the transformer still lying on the dresser where I had left it.

LS

We flew a circuitous route from Quito, via Lima then Sao Paulo to Manaus. The tour company put us up in the Taj Mahal Hotel with a room overlooking the Opera House, a truly amazing Theater built by the Rubber Barons in 1896 with just about everything from Carrara marble to Murano chandeliers imported from Europe. The story is that not only were the clothes worn by the Opera goers brought from Europe, but their clothes were shipped back to France for laundering as well. There is a ball room (Queen Elizabeth has since donated a large gilt mirror in the lobby as she felt the one in place was inadequate) where society met for drinks and smoking after the performances. Then the women were sent home and the men adjourned to the bordello across the street and then to the large church next door for confession next morning.


The Opera House


Dona Tania

We spent a week on a Houseboat on the river with three others, a French woman married to an American and a Brit of Italian-Caribbean descent. The tour company is called Swallows and Amazons (after the Arthur Ransome books) and is owned by a Scot\Canadian\American married to a woman from Amazonas. We went downstream to the confluence of the Rio Negro and Solimoes, where the black and silty white waters flow next to each other for kilometers.


The meeting of the waters

The rest of the trip was on the Negro as it is more acidic and mosquitoes cannot breed. The food was very good, prepared by an Indigenous woman in a very small galley. Lots of fish, fruit and vegetables. The first jungle trek was easy - along a boardwalk with crocodiles below us and a sloth and Turkey Vultures above. The second was more of an ordeal as the humidity was 100% and Marcio, the trusty guide, was slashing the jungle with his tesado (machete)to keep the path clear. Within half an hour we had seen a viper (death comes within 6 hours from the bite)and a bird-eating spider the size of a large crab, both in the middle of the trail. Three different types of fire ants involved running hard, jumping their column and then standing still while Anand (our guide from the boat) and Marcio brushed stray ants off our pants. Marcio was extremely knowledgable about the trees and plants. As far as I could tell there was a cure for every common ailment plus stress relief and baby formula. The final trek convinced me I had had enough of the forest. We walked three and a half hours up and down steep trails in a bath of perspiration and saw two frogs.


Jungle trekkers

We took numerous excursions in the motor boat (panga) and tried our hand at Piranha fishing with some success. We saw birds and then waited for dark to spot crocodile with a flashlight. I did not expect the flurry in the bow as Anand grabbed a little croc behind its head to allow us to touch and tell. A young kid brought a small Anaconda in his panga to have his photo taken but we never saw any on our treks. Fortunately, the city tour took us to the zoo where we saw all the animals of the Amazonas. The zoo is run by the army as a veterinary hospital for ailing animals of the jungle so those you see are in good shape and ready to be released back into the wild.

The Saturday we arrived was the big party for the kick off of Carnival. There were 10,000 party goers in the Plaza by the Opera House under our window and a rocking band with great amplifiers. Tonight is the start of the Carnival proper so the floats and Samba Schools will be assembling near our hotel. We ate at a Churrascaria after we came off the houseboat. This is the Brazilian bar-b-que where the meat keeps coming on big skewers until you cry stop. I missed my daughter-in-law being able to tell me what exotic meat I was eating.

Off to the southern tip of South America and cooler climes next.

LS