I woke early and was ready to go by 9am for the horseriding. My guide picked me up and we drove to his house on the outskirts of Hanga Roa. He told me he was born on the island, has five brothers and a sister, owns sixteen horses, speaks English, Spanish, Rapa nui and French and became good friends with Kevin Costner when he came to the island to direct the film 'Rapa Nui' - all in all an interesting guy! I'm introduced to my horse, Raco, and off we go.

The ride was lovely. I was in front most of the time and thoroughly enjoyed the scenery as we headed north, crossing green fields with ocean views, dodging black volcanic rocks and cantering a little before arriving at our first stop - Ahu Akivi. This is a platform with seven moai on. My guide tells me that these represent the seven explorers who founded the island and prepared it for civilisation for their king - my guidebook tells me different, apparently they're scientifically dated later than that - but I prefer to believe his story!

After that we ascend to Maunga Tere Vaka, the highest point of the island at 507m. Unfortunately as we're ascending the weather takes a turn for the worse and we reach the summit in a cloud of mist and rain. We stick it out for 15-20mins to see if it clears (the weather changes quickly here) but it doesn't. I resign myself to the fact that I can't control the weather and accept it, no view for me today... I think I would have been more disappointed if I'd walked up but it was pretty leisurely on the horse!

We descend a different way and head towards the coast. Our next stop is Ahu Te Peu, an old village that my guide tells me a 'constructor', someone who designed the moai, used to live in. It's an amazing setting, perched right on top of the cliffs. We wander around the various archaeological remains which include manavels; stone circular walls for planting fruit and vegetables in to protect them from the strong winds, and hare paengas; the stone foundations of elliptical boat shaped houses. There's one particularly large house, 30m long, that could have belonged to the constructor himself because he was very important and revered in the community or have been used for meetings and gatherings. There is also an ahu (platform) here where the moai have not been restored and you can see bits of them strewn across the ground - head and topknots in various states of decay, it's quite atmospheric.

We head south along the coast and stop at a couple of caves. The first is called Ana Te Pora, a long cave with enough room to stand upright which would have been used for meetings and gatherings. The second cave, Ana Kakenga, is the most impressive one we see. It is also know as Dos Ventanas (Two Windows) because after scrambling a bit through the narrow entrance it opens up into a larger cave with two large 'windows' at the end. These windows open out onto the cliff face and you can see the waves crashing onto the rocks far below.

Once we finish our horseride I get to play around wearing some traditional Rapanui headwear and doing my best version of a Polynesian warrior for photos!

I return to the hostel and at around 6pm I make the walk into town and north to Tahai, the moai I saw on my first day. This is a great place to watch sunset as it goes down directly behind the row of five moai. A wonderful end to a lovely day on Easter Island.