Easter Island is exactly as I had expected: a small tropical island with nothing else to see or do except the moai. The "town", capital, Hanga Roa is small enough to walk around in 20 minutes - slowly. The main street, Atamu Tekena, has a supermarket, some restaurants, pharmacy, bank, and tourist tat shops. It's not a place to spend an afternoon shopping. Maybe 10 minutes. Many places, including the tourist office and post office, close for a few hours' siesta midday (I've actually never seen the tourist office open - yesterday they had their hours posted, although it was still closed, today the sign was gone...). Meals seem to fall between 6.000 and 10.000 for a main course, so not extremely overpriced. The beaches here are nothing special either, certainly not worth travelling all this way for. There is only one officially designated beach where you can swim, at the northern end of the island.
Tomorrow I'm going on a full-day mystery tour of the island. I say "mystery", because I have no idea what I will be seeing. The guesthouse owner pounced on me the first night and wanted to sell me a full day and two half days. I said I'm only interested in a full day, but I can't get out of him what it will include. Only that it will cost 20.000 pesos, plus 30.000 park entrance fee.This is the same man who didn't collect me from the airport and asked twice for my name. I've also had another pointless discussion with him which I won't go into detail on. I've read one review online from some French visitors who said that as soon as he realised they weren't interested in booking any tours through him, he completely ignored them. I can believe that. He's never around and he's not interested in giving any advice or making my visit enjoyable in any way. He's only interested in how much money he can get out of me. The wi-fi is deplorable.
I suppose when you live on an isolated island and probably never travel yourself, you take the tourists for granted and don't care about how they experience their very expensive once-in-a-lifetime holiday. It doesn't matter how they treat visitors here, they will still come, and every day a new plane with hundreds of new visitors will replace the leavers and fill up the accommodations. When I went to the Galapagos many years ago, they had put up notices saying "Sonrie al turista, le da vida a tu isla" ("Smile at the tourists, they bring life to your island"). And I must say, the people on the Galapagos were some of the grumpiest I have met, also taking the tourists for granted. Some Easter Island service providers could well benefit from some customer service training.
It's often said that Easter Island is the most isolated island in the world. All marketing and not true. With daily flights, sometimes twice daily, from Santiago, and twice weekly to Tahiti, it is anything but. Yes it's way out in the Pacific, but it's infinitely better connected to the continent than e.g. Pitcairn, Tristan da Cunha, or South Georgia. Take Pitcairn as an example. To get there, you need to first get to Tahiti, then fly on to some remote place called Mangareva, then catch a ship that only runs once every three months! And the sea crossing takes 32 hours! The only way to get to Tristan da Cunha is by sailing for five-six days from Cape Town, South Africa! So I think Easter Island can strike that statement from their brochures.
Ironically I'll be leaving Easter Island on the Thursday before Easter... Looking forward to New Zealand now! Fish & chips, Asian food, and a Wendy's baconator, washed down with L&P! Sweet as, bro!
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