A different vacation

We've traveled a lot these past several years, but this time, in order to celebrate Victor's 30th birthday, we're going to try something very different. In less than 2 days we fly to Santiago, Chile, where we'll spend two nights before boarding an early 5 hour flight to Easter Island.

We'll be flying due west across the Pacific, covering a distance of

in order to land on the most remote inhabited island in the world—where the giant stone sculptures bear witness to a civilization which continues to fascinate. Oswaldo and I have been reading a yellowed Penguin edition of Thor Heyerdahl's AKU-AKU, written about his expedition there in 1955, when little was known about the island and its history. His riveting account of the battle between the long-eared masters and the short-eared workers (he suggests the latter killed and ate the former) is refuted in a much later guidebook A COMPANION TO EASTER ISLAND by James Grant-Peterkin. While doing my nails in preparation for the trip I tell this story to the manicurist. "Why do you want to go there?" she asks. "Couldn't you go to Thailand instead?"