Arrival on Easter Island

Flew to Easter Island this morning--a small dot 5 hours away from land. We were surprised to be met by Claudio Cristino, the chief archeologist of the island who has been featured on Nova and in National Geographic articles among others. He will be our guide for the next three days! We had just passed around an article from Nat Geo Adventure from last year with his picture in it. This is one of the benefits of traveling with Nat Geo and Lindblad--they have the BEST relationships. In fact, Lindblad was the first company to bring any tourists to Easter Island back in 1964.


Just visited one site this afternoon. It will probably be the only one we see with eyes. They are fake, placed there for tourists' photos so the islanders who hold the real eyes (made of white coral) won't make a fortune charging for photos with eyes.


After dinner, we went to a wonderful dance show. Not your over-produced Hawaiian-style show here--this is just a local dance group and they were excellent. Even our van driver, Eduardo, was in the band playing ukulele and drums!


I even made a few new friends ;-)

Life is good!