Te Pito O Te Henua - finally

We flew to Easter island from Tahiti yesterday; somewhere I have always wanted to go since I first read about the remote island in the South Pacific, thousand of miles away from the nearest landmass. Where ancient people made giant stone statues that no longer stand; where tribal wars, explorers and Chilean slave traders almost killed off the population entirely. On many an occasion I looked at the island through Google, tracing the island's coastline in search of Moai, and researched flights from New Zealand.

Then somehow, it became easy. A 5 hour flight from Papeete and here we are. Most people were transiting through and carrying on to Santiago, but the 30 or so of us that got off the plane for good were met with leis from our hosts and driven away. First impressions from the airport to Hanga Roa were of a sleepy town. The hotel Taura'a is at the end of the Main Street / town; unfortunately the hosts seem to belong to that group of people in the wrong line of work - they seem perfectly good people but they had no desire to offer information - in the way a good host always wants to shout about their piece of home - so without a map or welcome book to read in the room of the many activities to do and places to eat we decided to head straight out and see what we could find. 

The Main Street has gift shops, coffee houses, supermarkets and restaurant galore and even a fantastic sushi restaurant (Sushi Ohi) where we took a punt of ordering from the Spanish menu and happily both got what we wanted! An afternoon nap later, we went back out to explore and I found our 1st Moai - then promptly got told off by a passing Rapu Nui man on a scooter for getting too close to the statue. But as I now know the Moais are actually figureheads for burial chambers, I very much understand his anger. 

After a wander around the harbour we settled on Te Moana as a good place to have a beer or two and some snack food. Note, snack food in Easter island falls on the American side of the scale - as in, could feed 4 people as a main meal. We sat outside, waiting for the sunset and watching the surfers whilst eating a giant bowl of smoked fish tartare with avocado and toast (looked like dog food, tasted amazing!) and drinking beer. 

On a whim we ordered a bottle of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon wine and enjoyed the music (Parov Stelar!) and people watched. Instead of sensibly heading back to our home, we decided to have another drink on the way in a random and deserted restaurant. Then some more food and another beer at a deserted pizzeria ran by an very odd man. The pizza was like no pizza I'd ever seen before; oval shaped dough with veggies, sauce and cheese piled high on top. Still, after 4 beers and 1/2 a bottle of wine it tasted pretty good to me. 

The next day was the full day tour with Green Island Tours. Our guide was Patricio, a Chilean man who married a Rapu Nuian and has lived here for 40 years. He certainly knows his stuff and really understands and loves this island. We went first to pick up a park ticket, you need one to go into any of the national park sites which is pretty much anywhere of interest on Easter island. You can get them as soon as you exit the airport but I couldn't see the ticket office there and in keeping with his not arsed demeanour, our host hadn't bother to mention this fact to us when he picked us up. 

Our first stop was Hanga Te'e, followed by Akahanga. Both showed broken Moais and Patricio explained how this was done by the short ear tribe, who had arrived at the same time on the island as the dominate long ear tribe, likely as their slaves (and probably picked up from New Zealand!). There is no known date for this colonisation of Easter Island but common belief dates it around the 14th century AD. After centuries of being leave workers the short ear tribe finally rebelled and wars broke out in the 17th century. When the short ear tribe triumphed they pulled down all the Moais. By the time the first explorers (late 18th century) found Easter island the Moais were all laid on the ground, face down. 

He also explained that these platforms, Ahus, were actually burial chambers for the great Chiefs of each tribe and their bloodlines, when one chief died his body would be dried out and placed under the stone platform. Then a Moai would be carved in his honour and placed on top of the platform. Then when another prominent member of that tribe died he too would be placed on the platform and it would gain another Moai. The lesser members of the family were cremated and their ashes buried under rocks by the platform. Around these Ahus would have been villages, with tiny houses and chicken coops and vegetable patches, a which have all now been scattered around the island due to disrestful rule, British farming walls, thievery and tsunamis.  Around Akahanga this was easier to see, as now Rapa Nuians govern their own national park they have made various reconstructions of how the village would have looked then. 

The highlight of this trip for me was the next stop, the Rano Raraku which was the quarry used to create all those Moais. As we wandered around the heads (with buried bodies!) Patricio showed us the cuttings in the quarry face, where Moais has been carved directly from the volcano face and only moved once the Moai was ready. This was so they would only use what was needed to make one Moai and at any one time several Moais were being carved at the same time (the small ears would have been the ones carving) Many still sit in the volcano waiting to be finished. The thing that blew my mind the most was that the heads around the grassy slope were the finished articles waiting to be taken, almost like a shopfront. So your chief's recently deceased? Wander over to Rano Raraku, pick the one that most fits his size and then transport it back to your village and add the final features that make it unique to your chief, and of course the red hair (top hat). Stick it up on the platform and voila! The perfect tribute to your fallen chief. Of course, no one still really knows how those Moai were moved from the quarry, or up on to the platforms but Patricio's theory was by mana (magic) and after wandering around today I like this theory the best. There was only one female Moai (Easter island was a very patriarchal society) and also one small eared man Moai - no one knows either why these two were created. 

We stopped here for lunch, empanadas and local Easter Island beer, Mahina. Both the porter and pale ale is highly recommended! After lunch we went to Tongariki, the reconstructed platform of 15 Moais. An earthquake from Chile created a tsunami that hit both Easter island and Japan in the late 80s which caused the fallen Moais here to be moved 300 metres further inland. This prompted a Japanese company in 1990 to begin restoration as a means of advertising a company. The Japanese are apparently regular visitors to Easter island and hold it in great respect and to show even more faith they returned a Moai they has taken from the island. If only Chile, Britain and the many others would do the same.....Anyway, for 4 years this company painstakingly recreated the Moai using images from before the tsunami of the fallen Moais. It's magificent to see. Around here lay the ruins of the village with visible petroglyphs. 

We stopped at another petroglyphs site, Papa Vaka where again the turtles, doubled hulled canoes and sharks where very visible in the volcanic rock. We also stopped at Te Pito Kura, which not only has one of the last standing Moais (drawings made by a European ship in 1888 of this statue standing tall prove it outlasted the rebellion wars but then sometime after this it was toppled too) but also a rock bought from the great island the ancients came from. This was believed to be an island somewhere between Tahiti and Hawaii, that suffered some horrible fate that required all its inhabitants to find a new land. The leader, Hotu Matu'a led his people (and those slaves) to Te Pito O Te Henga and with him he bought his shiny round magnetic rock as a talisman. Like the Motaeki boulders in NZ, is was a perfectly spherical shape but unfortunately we could not confirm the magnetic qualities as there is now a wall around it to prevent touching. Scientists believe it's actually a meteor. Either theory works well for me.

The final stop of the full day tour was Anakena beach,(which is also where the half marathon ends!) it's a beautiful white sandy beach with several more resurrected Moais and imported Hawaiian coconut trees. We took a walk around, had a little paddle then stopped to just watch the waves coming in and going out again. Very peaceful place and one we will revisit before the week is out. The drive home was via the half marathon route (only backwards) and it helped quell some fears we'd been having about the hills!

 Patricio showed us Haka Honu, a cafe on the harbour front that is great for sunset viewing so we got out there and said goodbye to him. It was a brilliant tour and he was a great guide, We ordered a snack to share (see previous point about food sizes) and a couple of beers and looked at all our photos. After a brief respite back at the hotel, we went to the Internet cafe to get wifi codes (the readily available internet promised to us on the hotel website has not worked since we got here and surprise, the host did not seem to care when we told her!) and sat ourselves in the restaurant Krava downstairs.   We ordered a tuna, rice and salad plate to share and watched some of the Chile v Mexico football game whilst also catching up with the world on Facebook and with emails. 

Such an amazing day in one of the most beautiful places in the world! Life is good. 

More adventures in the South Pacific

On day 3 we got up and went for a run - it was ridiculously hot! We started our 10km run at 7am and it must have over 25 degrees already! Not the smartest move but still, more half marathon training under our belt! After this, it was a spot of reading on the beach, a snorkel over the Motu opposite and then lunch at the Hisbiscus hotel again (mainly because it was so close). On the way back to our hotel I heard a restaurant playing actually good music (OK, Duffy but it made a change from 90s ballads or island music.) As we entered the Plantation Bar and Resturant the music changed to Me and Mrs Jones so happily we ordered a beer each. It's a cool set up, tables on the deck in shade but a fence separating the bar from the road for privacy. There was a Resturant inside and possibly a dance floor given the shiny disco ball already lit at 2pm.

 As the Hinano Amber beer was served to us the music switched to I believe I can fly..... Seriously ....and was closely followed by Ronan Keating. Oh well. It was a nice beer and a good opportunity to watch the locals. Two sets of mothers and sons ate food together as it was mothers days. The women both wore pink dresses and the sons sadly looked old enough to be their husbands. A sign that sun ages you I guess. 

We left and walked back to our room for afternoon naps. We started on the shandies when we woke up. The advantage of having the beachfront bungalow was that we could sit there and watch as the sun set without needing to join the others on the beach but that night we were slightly distracted by the fact I'd packed the wrong passports. As in, our NZ passports when we had 9 months earlier booked the Easter Island flights using our British passport numbers.....a frenzied email later sent to LAN but it was hard to shake the fear we might actually not be allowed on the plane.

 To cheer us up we decided to head to the Mayflower, a restaurant that was known for being a bit fancy and offering something a little more than the usual pacific fare of tuna or mahi mahi in coconut milk. It was amazing! It was a lovely cosy dining area and the food was out of this world good. Without wanting to go all AA Gill on you, Beautiful Shrimp dumplings to start (after the obligatory bread rolls of course, I've missed this European trait of giving you free bread with all meals but my figure hates it. Bread is my kypronite!) and then I had lobster ravoli (as good as Carlos in Donny!) and Andy had grilled tuna and both were really special. We treated ourselves to a carafe of Cote du Rhone wine and then lemon meringue pie for desert. Noms! 

The next morning we woke up to discover an email reply from LAN that simply said, thank you we have updated your passport details....oh the relief! We packed up and sadly left Fabienne and Elvis, the brilliant hosts at Fare Miti. A shuttle bus picked us up to take us back to the ferry terminal but due to a few inconsiderate beings not turning up on time for the bus our time got later and later until the driver was clearly speeding along the windy roads to get us to the ferry on time. We turned in with 10 minutes to spare but there was a taxi in the bus space and a few angry words were exchanged until finally our driver got out of the bus, climbed into the man's taxi (he was helping people with their bags) and moved it for him. With minutes to spare we got on our ferry and away we went. Back to Papeete, which it turns out is as much of a shit hole in the day time as it was at 1am. 

Because our flight to Easter island wasn't until 3am the following day we booked a cheap hotel opposite the airport. But decided to head to the intercontinental hotel a few miles up the room to utilise their pool and restaurant. Which it turned out was a good way to while away a few hours. Back to the room to watch some friends episodes on Netflix, and a quick visit to an ok Chinese restaurant for tea and finally it was time to head to the airport. And this is where we are now! 

New adventures in the South Pacific

Every journey I go on, I take a little notebook with me and jot down all our experiences, from food places and bars to randoms we meet but our departing Auckland to fly to Papeete was all chaos with a worrying lack of preparation and in my disorganised state I forgot my notebook. So instead of risking forgetting everything i thought I would write it here, I guess that's what's a blog is for, non?

We flew down in to Papeete at 1am, gaining our Friday back which is always nice. In an effort to save money in French Polynesia (something we heard would be difficult) we decided not to book a hotel for the 5 hours before our ferry to Moorea and just find somewhere to stay awake for those 5 hours instead. The first hurdle was the language barrier. We had both taken French at school but that was 20 years ago and our taxi driver didn't really speak English. She agreed to take us to the ferry terminal though she was clearly confused about why we want to go there at 2am when the first ferry wasn't until 6am. I had heard about a food market, les Roulettes that I thought was close and somewhere we could sit after the food trucks left after 2am but the driver couldn't understand me. If we had bothered to learn a few French phases we could have asked, well, where is a good place to kill 5 hours unmolested and maybe with beers? Lesson 1, learn to speak the language!

She drove around the ferry terminal and it was dishearteningly abandoned and all locked up. Eventually she stopped outside the ferry terminal entrance which just happened to have a couple of dodgy looking nightclubs opposite. Not really what we were looking for, but we couldn't stay in the taxi for much longer. We thought to stand outside the ferry terminal gates with all our luggage for a few hours but as we paid the driver a Tahitian woman leaned over the railings to one of the nightclubs and asked what we were doing, and strongly advised we did not hang around this area with our belongings as they would be taken. 

So we entered the Ziouziou nightclub - which also doubled as a karaoke bar - to the amusement of all the drunk Tahitians inside. We felt uneasy, but got a beer ($13 a bottle!!) and sat in the corner attempting to draw zero attention to ourselves and to stay awake. It was mostly women but as the evening went on we realised some men too, who we had originally thought were women until we heard them sing. Apparently this is a thing in Tahiti, men who were raised like daughters and so continue dressing and acting this way into adulthood. 

And in the end people were friendly enough and left us alone and the karaoke wasn't too horrific, and at 4am when they kicked us and everyone else, we made our way over to the ferry terminal entrance only for a lovely security man inside to appear only moments after asking, "Moorea ferry?" And then letting us inside the complex and locking the gates behind us. 

The ferry ride is only 25 minutes long and it is the top rated thing to do in Papeete on TripAdvisor which possibly says more about Papeete than it does the ferry ride. To be honest I slept through most of it's all nighters are not really a thing I do much any more so I was pretty sleepy. I also slept for the most of 40 minutes taxi ride to our hotel too. 

What I I did see of the island though looked stunning. Extemely dramatic, big peaks of volcanic cliffs and forest and then every now and views of golden sandy beaches. Like the interior of Rarotonga but so much bigger. Or Hawaii without all the infrastructure. We arrived around 7.30am to our hotel, Moorea Fare Miti to be told our room would actually be available as the previous guests had left earlier due to an Air Tahiti strike. Briefly noticing the amazing room, a traditional Polynesia hut right on the beach which is beautiful, we went into our bedroom, turned on the fan, and slept for 4 hours.

After we woke we realised how hungry we were so we wandered down the beach for 10 minutes until we found a hotel restaurant we could eat in. The restaurant at the Hotel Hisbiscus is a pretty soulless affair but it has a nice view so we forgave them the thoughtless non offensive music (which to me is the most offensive music) and ordered pizza, green salad and beers. Lesson 2, eating healthy is expensive in French Polynesia. The green salad, basically a bowl of lettuce leaves, was the equivalent of NZD $8. 

We finally got to lie on the beach in the afternoon and read our books; absolute bliss. The hotel doesn't have a restaurant itself but offers varoius takeaway options to be delivered to the room - excellent! We both chose a tuna option, one with garlic sauce and one in vanilla and coconut and then settled in for our first Society island sunset. I do love a good sunset. 

The food was amazing, and again we choose healthy sides - rice and green beans - and there was enough for next night too. Ah, thrift! We drank our gin and whiskey and played cards until we got sleepy again. 

The next morning I watched as a gecko (who we named Hand Lion) stole across our outside table and then licked the remains of our evening meal up from the tablecloth. You just don't get these experiences in suburban Auckland. 

For day 2 I had booked us a boat trip with Captain Taina, in her glass bottomed boat. It was a small boat, with around 14 people (all pretty old) seated around the side of the glass bottom in the middle. She steered us over the coral to watch the pretty fishes and we followed a few turtles around too. Then we got into the water, with a Sting Ray. I couldn't quite get the thought of Steve Irwin out of my head which did put me off getting too close but Taina fed the Ray and then led it around so everyone could touch them. We got back in the boat and a little further on stopped at a sandbank for more stingray action, and also some sharks. To be fair the Sharks actually weren't that scary as they weren't really that arsed about us. They just circled around us about a lot. There were a lot more stingrays this time and again Captain Taina with the use of two dead fishes led them around so we all could experience getting touched up by a sting ray. Was a very surreal experience but pretty cool! Andy spent most of his time trying to get the Sharks to play with him. 

Back in the boat and Taina took us to a place out in the water, in view of the first Protestant church where a local sculptor had been carving statues for the past 15 years and then dropping them in the ocean. The reason was as a talking point for tourists and as a show of defiance of those early missionaries who forced Tahitians (as they did all across the pacific islands) to throw out their "false idols". It's one of the saddest facts about explorers that by "discovering" these beautiful isles they opened the doors to religion, diseases and outlandish claims to rule over these islands. One of the things that has surprised me so much on this trip is how many French tourists there are here (Captain Taina's boat was mostly French but she did a good job of speaking in one language and then switching to English) Well, you might think, it is a French colony but it is always a long, long way away from France! I can't imagine it's that cheap or easy to get to so I assumed more tourists from this side of the world to be honest. Will be interesting to see what Huahine and Ra'itea are like....

After a brief trip out beyond the reef into the actual Pacific Ocean we finally went to our private Motu for  lunch. Taina made a gorgeous raw tuna mixed with salad, lime and coconut milk which she served in a coconut shell whilst we drank Tahitian rum and pineapple juice. Yum! Then we had swordfish skewers with rice. An amazing meal and very fresh. After our food we had time for more snorkels and then she showed us how to open a coconut and use it and then it was time to leave. Back in time for the most amazing sunset and some cheeky Hinano beers. The evening meal was a bit disappointing after the amazing lunch - leftover cold fish and oily fried from the food truck down the road, although it was exceptionally cheap. 

My first Arty April artwork! (That I'm happy to share....)

Adventures in Recordland second draft done!

Today I finished the second draft of my young adult novel Adventures in Recordland which means it's almost ready to share with people....I am excited but scared to let others in to my world. I'm not so good at criticism even if delivered with the best intentions. I love my characters now, what if you all don't? And what if you don't cry at certain parts of the book like I did earlier? But it's written now and I want it to live out there in the world. The hard part is knowing when it's ready to let go.....

Mindful? Pah! Bring on Arty April

Well mindful March was a blow out. If anything it was the least mindful I've felt in years and that pissed me right off. It's been a busy year, both work and social and I've ran out of time to think between the doing at work and the zoning out at home, socialising with friends or galavallanting around Australiasia.

But I've stopped now. A weekend to myself to do the things I enjoy; make lists, watch YouTube clips of The Smiths and Aztec Camera, drink whiskey and most of all, write. And I am. I am feeling inspired and ready almost for my close up. Or Clara's close up. 

So I guess I got mindful at the end of March.....maybe I'll give it another in May. 

April is being arty and I'm excited for this, I just need to make time for it. The first 2 months were food related and food is something I have to do 3 times a day so it's easy to find time. I never thought it would be this hard to make time for the things I really want as downtime so that's a learn. 

Anyway will keep you updated! Back to the Smiths.....

Mindful March

So dairy free February was interesting.... I did make a vegetarian pizza using a fake cheese recipe and it was ok but let's be honest, it was no worthy substitution for cheese. After the 3rd week I had a weekend away with friends and I broke at the Leigh Sawmill with pizza, then the next day with cheese at Ransom vineyard. So, it's fair to say going dairy free will not be a continuing thing; but I will endeavour to only eat cheese once a week as I have been doing re entry anyway as it is sadly my kypotronite. And I would like to give up cows milk; I've been eating soy and coconut yoghurts and that has been an easy change, it's more the milk in tea I will need to get used to! 

So March heralds a new monthly theme, this being mindful. Something I need to find urgently due to work and self imposed deadlines and obvious procrastinations. And then the drive to work causes my anger levels to raise above what I assumed I was capable of. I do feel not in a calm zen place currently but 6 days in I have not really done much to get me there. But next week I will be commuting by bus for 2 days and on Friday I was practising my Hamlet soliqolgy on my way to and from work and that helped calm me somewhat in the Auckland traffic!