"We sighted land on the 26th April at 0345, and it was a strange feeling having seen no land since we left New Zealand 31 days before. We dropped anchor at Hanga Roa which is the capital of the island later that morning, the coastline is very rugged and there are not too many sheltered harbours apart from the small ones the locals have built up.

We (the crew) had two days to explore the island and of course a little bit of relaxing after our amazing time at sea. The people of this interesting island all speak Spanish with a little bit of Rapa Nui which seems to be dying out, but they are trying to preserve their culture and are proudly showing interested tourists their wonderful island.

The first day off was spent wondering around Hunga Roa, looking at the museum Museo Antropologico Sebastian Englert which was a great place to visit, the history of Rapa Nui is laid out before you with translations into English. They explain how they think the Moai were erected and why there are so many Moais carved out of stone left on Rano Rakaku. Also of course a visit to the markets, which was not to be missed as I find Markets are always a give you a good idea of prices of souvenirs.

The evening was if I remember correctly a great night out, it started off with dinner with the VCs (Voyage Crew) at some restaurant that I cannot remember the name of, all I’ve got noted down in my dairy is that dinner was not as fabulous as the evening which followed it! We ended up in a very Latin nightclub, where all the girls were dragged to their feet by some awesomely handsome sexy Latin dancers, which had the moves to match! Oh my lord can the Spanish dance… what a great night out.

The next day armed with my lunch I did a tour of the island with most of the VCs from the New Zealand to Easter Island Voyage, we started off in an anti clockwise direction (all the tours all go the same way!) there was different stops along the way, to show us how the Moai’s were erected and how long it took them to carve them out and move them to their chosen site (18 months for a large Moai). At one of the sites there was a Moai which had not been erected and they could tell this because he was still blind and when they are erected there is a ceremonial in which his eyes are carved out.

Rano Raraku (the Volcano) is where the Moai were carved out of the porous grey rocks, groups of Moai are partly buried with only their heads sticking out of the grassy slopes, there are others in the early stages of carving and the largest one is 21 metres high but most range from 5.5m to 7m, it is believed that the larger the Moai the larger standing in the community had the person who passed. We climbed to the top of Rano Raraku and the views were amazing, we also found at the top of the volcano some very interesting round wholes in the ground measuring about half a metre wide and a metre down, we asked the guide (when we got back down) what were they used for because they were clearly man made, she replied that they used to place logs in them and lower the Moai down the hill side.

Set the alarm for 6.30am it faithfully went off and I woke up (for a few seconds…) at 6.50am the same time I was supposed to be waking all of the others… ran around and woke everyone, said goodbye to all the ones we were leaving behind, walked to the fuel station then a ride in a truck for the ship.

That was my visit to Easter Island, the funny thing is that being a horse rider, the images of horses were amazing, there seemed to be horses everywhere (though they were small horses) they seemed to be able to carry immense weights on their backs and also were the preferred way of travel, though I am not too sure if you could trust their tack, it seemed a little rough… but the horses were beautiful Arab mix with a little bit of pony in there as well, as you toured the island, there was more horses than any other live stock. I was offered a horse for 1500 pesos I was tempted as the horse was only a three year old, and seemed of lovely nature, but I decided that Barry may not want to wake up to a horse breathing down his porthole and it may have been a little difficult to get the horse on board, though someone did reassure me that it could be done.

Cara.