We got a car - Friday, April 21

Easter Island is only 2 hours behind Chile, which in turn has the same time as Brazil, in spite of being 4 1/2 hours flying time west. According to the longitude we should really be 3 hours behind. We feel this, when we walk to breakfast around 8am under the starry nighttime sky, still able to pick out the southern cross, and it certainly makes for confused wakings at 5am with a lot of reading in the dark.

Today we take possession of our rental car. We drive to check out a little protected harbor, around the corner from our hotel, which is where the freighters are unloaded, when the sea is calmer.

Then we drive into the center of Hangaroa, basically two main streets, with scattered Tahiti-style clothes stores, restaurants and dive shops. There's ragtag feel about the scene, sort of halfway between Thimpu, Bhutan and certain touristy towns in the Brazilian northeast. We see several Polynesian men hanging out, some with their long hair tied in topknots, and others with fabulous hats decorated with green leaves and feathers. There are stray dogs everywhere, many of which look like they might have descended from one ancestral German Shepherd.
In the the local farmers'  market we finger unusual fat bananas and small green avocados,

then wander through makeshift craft stalls looking for good quality souvenirs, but the pickings are pretty slim.
Today we are going to the west coast to see the quarry where the red topknots, the pukao, were made. Beyond the airport, away from the city, we turn left into a landscape of few trees and rolling hills, in reality the tops of the many volcanoes on the island. At Puna Pau we leave the car and start walking up the hill in a wide circle around a jumble of huge 12 ton topknots, tossed there like so many marbles.

 The view is quite stunning at the top with the sea in the distance. it's so quiet and calm - we can hear the wind and the insects humming. There are surprisingly few birds around. Near the town we see mostly small ones, like sparrows and finches, and, in the fields, Chimanga hawks - brought in to hunt the problematic Polynesian rat - which ate all the bird eggs. (Those birds have the weirdest screech). We haven't seen or heard any marine birds. They apparently fled the island long ago to breed on unihabited islands several hundreds of kilometers away.

 We drive on to the Ahu Akivi - where, unusually, 7 restored moai stand in the middle of the inland fields,

possibly to honor the 7 scouts, who are supposed to have settled here, after they came to explore the island prior to the king's arrival in Anakena. The moai are cordoned off in typical island fashion.

We're supposed to proceed to the coast along a dirt road, but heavy rain during the night has made the road impassable, so we go instead to the local museum, where we see the only female moai ever found

 as well as the only moai eye.

We head down to the harbour for an incredible ceviche lunch at Te Moana

 with a delicious Rapa Nui mojito, que ninguem é de ferro

After lunch we walk around the corner into the main harbor for a coffee at a nice little café.

The weather changes abruptly and it begins to rain quite heavily, so we head back to the hotel to swim and to relax after another full day. 

Before we call it night in preparation for our sunrise tour tomorrow, we walk down to the sea to catch a glorious sunset to the sound of those massive waves breaking on the rocks.