23:00 - It's mother's day in the UK, so, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all the mummys reading. The weather this morning was glorious! It's been cloudy for the whole of my stay here and finally I saw blue skies :-))). Today was my last full day on Easter Island. Tomorrow I leave :-(. It was also Sunday and as they do a spanish/rapa nui catholic service in town, after breakfast I hitched a lift with the owner of Tea Nui and went to mass. The place was absolutely packed. I was standing in the back and more people were trying to get in...I have to confess that I stayed about a half hour and then walked out. I need my praying to be at least comfortable! :-)
I made my way to the museum of Tahai so that I could be sure to have left nothing out on this trip. The only real things of interest there were the only woman Moai in decent condition and the only eye ever found on the island. The woman Moai really looks like Bart Simpson!!! You'll see in the pictures...I am not kidding. The walk to the museum was not exactly around the corner from the church as it actually took me half an hour in the heat and wearing long trousers as I had thought it would be disrespectful to turn up in shorts to church. So, after walking about half way back, I managed to catch a lift with a lady going in the same direction and went back to Tea Nui. Given the amazing weather, I wanted to go back to the beach at the opposite end of the island that we had visited on the tour the day before. It is the one with the Moai with the head dress still intact right there on the beach. Marie had a scooter available so I hired it for the day (for 40 dollars!!! And it's the cheapest I found!). The helmet was a bike helmet and I ended up not wearing it as the wind kept pushing it off my head. It felt a little like being in Formentera on a scooter :-)...small island...going to the beach...no helmet... So, I went to the beach and on the way stopped off to see the cave and the fifteen Moai. I finally took a dip in the sea! After a little swim and drying off I had an empanada from the same shack as the day before. At 2pm they were just opening up and it took a half hour to get any food (hey! but no one was in a rush). It was as good as I remembered... I wanted to do so many things today as I will probably never pass this way again. I wanted all the images to stay hetched in my mind. So I drove back to Hanga Roa to refuel the scooter, stopped for a little raw fish, looked at two local teams playing sunday league footie and made my way back to see more of the Moai I had seen over the last couple of days. I love this place. At around 6pm I finally decided it was time to go back and have a shower. My face was very very red, despite my using factor 50 today! I checked in for tomorrow's flight and then went to Tahai to look at the sunset. It's a little bit like the Big Sur used to be like, people gather here to see the sun go down. They sit quietly on the hill, some play music on their guitars...it's special...or at least it is until a group of japanese come and stand in front of everybody taking pictures!!! They did eventually move away...
After the sunset, I went for dinner in a Japanese place that everybody on Trip Advisor has raved about (it ranks number one as a restaurant on Easter Island): Kotaro. The place is tiny (seats about 15 people). It looks a little more than a hut, but inside it feels very authentically Japanese. It's run by a husband and wife team and they are both friendly and helpful. The food was pretty amazing and it ended up costing less than the other very average places I have bene eating in over the last 3 nights. I rounded off dinner by stopping off to buy a cornetto.