Hola. I've just flown back to Santiago after a week on Rapa Nui. Rapa Nui absolutely rocked. The island is about 20km long and fairly tropical and humid. The major attraction is obviously the Moai (big rock carvings) but there is a lot more to the island. The local community (almost 4,000) are still very set in their traditional ways. They all still speak Rapa Nui (as well as Spanish) and still passionately maintain local customs. The accommodation on the island is very basic (but comfortable) with no resorts to attract the usual undesirable tourism that comes with it (the locals said they are fighting to prevent an Amercian company from building a resort at the moment). I had a good indication of the local hospitality on my first morning. I was walking up north through pooring rain searching for a cave and got a lift with two locals heading up fishing. They drove me to the cave, gave me a history lesson, offered me coke and cigarettes and waited for the rain to stop until they would let me out (and in the mean time 'skun one up' and passed it around). This was typical of every day. You can walk anywhere on the island and you'll never walk long until someone stops and throws you in the back of their rusty old 4WD and drops you anywhere you want to go, no matter which direction they were heading. There are Moai statues dotted around the island and the mystery of their history adds to their impressive size and detail. Without going into detail, they were all carved from a huge volanic quarry and then (somehow) moved to verious points on the island. It's beleived competition between the 'long ears' and the 'short ears' led to enourmous number of the statues being build in increasing size and number until the eventual complete exaustion of the resources on the island. There are still a heap of unfinished Maoi partly carve in the quarry and you can see just how big they were starting to get before the island's demise. We had a great group of us on the island and one of the highlights was definetely a BBQ on the northern part of the island. Our host (who's only response to any question was 'no problem') drove 12 of us to the top and dropped us off. We had barely started the fire when a local women came over and told us to stand aside while she cooked for us. It was a full moon night and we spent the night drinking, eating, swimming and just hanging out with the Maoi. I camped up there and had the place to myself for the sunrise in the morning. Amazing stuff. The locals love to party and dance too, and the local disco (a big shed) on a Saturday night was a blast. I went diving on one of the mornings with a local. As with everything on the island, the approach was very relaxed. We went out on a small boat, and just jumped in. No dive breifing, no questions about my ability or even whether I had a licence. The water is amazing clear with visability about 30-50 metres. Sadly my time ended on Wednesday and I flew back to Santiago. But it wasn't just any flight, it was of course, a party flight. The locals spent most of the flight wandering around the plane (seatbelt sign were ignored of course) socialising and had drunk the plane dry after 3 hours. I'm flying to the south of Chile on Saturday and should hopefully be trekking the Torres Del Paine by early next week. It's supposed to be one of the best treks in the world so I can't wait. Congatulations to Wal, Ged and Ritchie on some awsome efforts at Ironman New Zealand last week. I hope you're enjoying some sleep, food and fun at last. Chao.