So, we had a night in Santiago after our stunning journey across the Andes. Stayed in a lovely, cheap hostel - big old renovated colonial style house called Casaltura. Massive room at the back so pretty quiet too. We were up super early to head out to Easter Island, to say I was excited about going there is an understatement!
After a five hour flight out over the Pacific, we landed to be greeted with flower necklaces before being taken to our hotel (transfer of all of about 3 mins)! Beautiful place looking over the ocean with a pool, plus a "natural" pool in the rocks by the sea. When the tide was in, huge waves would crash into the pool - beautiful.

Well what can I say about Easter Island?! It is everything I hoped it would be and more. I mean I knew about the Moais and the mysterious isolation of the island, but I didnt know it was tropical with palm trees and would give me a feeling of inner calm (no easy task)! We also had hot sunshine the whole time we were there - yay.
I wont bore you with exactly what we did but we chilled out, saw many wonderful sites, on our tours of the island, ate huge icecreams and both fell in love with the place. Peaceful is not the word.

A little history lesson for you to accompany the pics - the moais (heads) were made between the 7th and 18th century and were all found face down when Europeans arrived. The islands population reached an unsustainable level of about 20,000 in the 1800's and there was alot of fighting between tribes. It was believed that wrecking the moais of opposing tribes would bring bad luck. All the moais you see standing have been painstackingly re-erected by sponsors. Apart from the ones that were part made and buried at the quarry, they are still as they were found. There are hundreds of the things all over the island, puts Stonehenge to shame!
We both wished we'd booked to stay another day to rent a quad bike and go and explore a little on our own.

As they say......be careful what you wish for!!! As we got to the airport to check in, we were told we wouldnt be leaving. The flight from the previous day was cancelled as the air con broke, so those passengers were getting our flight out. It made you realise even more how totally isolated this place is! After an annoying, very hot afternoon (my inner peace left me!!!) we were given vouchers for a hotel and food and told they would call in the morning to let us know what flight we would be on. I think we lucked out with our room as an Aussie guy we chatted to at the airport was in a very basic sounding room in someones house. We were at least in a hotel! It was a Saturday night in peak season and they had to find beds for hundreds of people so I guess it was luck of the draw!
I was more worried about cancelling the transfer and hotel room we had booked in Santiago and what to do about our hotel the next night in Valparaiso, 2hr bus ride from Santiago. Anyway it could have been worse, we had no connecting flight to try and catch and wouldnt lose too much money.

Thankfully today we got on a flight at 1:30 back to Santiago. Jumped in a cab to the bus station and caught a bus to Valparaiso. Got to our hotel at 11pm and am now off to sleep, night night.