Easter Island is part of Chile and is about 1,500 miles west of mainland South America. It’s a difficult port for cruisers because of (1) no pier to tie up to and (2) normal high winds and big waves that make it extremely difficult to allow cruise passengers to safely get onto the tender boat, (one of the ship’s lifeboats) and get to shore. Cruise ships are able to get passengers ashore in only about 50% of planned visits to the island.
We were lucky this time in that despite rough seas, all passengers that wanted to were able to go ashore. Even so, the bobbing lifeboat rode about 18 inches below and 18 inches above the level of the ship’s loading platform. Thus, the crew assisting passengers had their hands full in preventing injuries as passengers got onto a lifeboat and again when they returned to the ship.
The primary attractions of Easter Island are the 800+ mystical Moai statues that were carved out of a rock quarry many hundreds of years ago. The residents at the time cut down trees and turned them into rollers to move the huge and heavy statues from the quarry to the coast. Then they dug big holes so that they could wedge the statue upright. As the bottom fell into the hole, it was then positioned permanently in an upright position. The statues range from about 8 feet to over 30 feet in height.
We loved the visit and I’ll include two photos of statues.
This evening (January 17th, a sea day), our entertainment after dinner was a group playing and singing ABBA hit songs, including many that were included in the musical play Mama Mia and the movie of the same name. This was their second and last performance on the ship. We wish they could stay and perform again and again and again! I will include a photo.
What a wonderful port; albeit a bit scary in the tender boats getting to and from the ship. We are really enjoying your posts and keep you in our prayers that the passengers and crew stay healthy. We saw an ABBA production (ABBA Mania) here in Oshkosh on Kathleen’s birthday…it was fantastic.
Seems crazy that you had to go all the way to Easter Island just to get a picture with some ABBA impersonators. But, I think that just speaks to your deep level of commitment to 70s Swedish Pop. Great pictures!!
Miss you! Sounds like you are taking advantage of every minute! Keep on
Beautiful photo of the Moai statue with the boat in the background! Happy you were able to visit the island!
I didn’t realize there were 800 statues!! Hard to wrap my mind around the immensity of that “project!” And it would be interesting to know the reason behind it. Glad your trip is going well.