April 6 Day 50
We got up, made ourselves breakfast and headed out to the museum on the edge of town. The maps here are definitely not to scale as it took more than 30 minutes to walk there and it was hard to find, again no street numbers.
It was worth the walk. It had bilingual information panels and an assortment of artifacts that explained the history of the island better than our guide did. They also had a temporary display of current artwork and a slideshow contrasting pictures from 70 years ago to the sites now.
We watched a video of western scientists trying different methods of hauling statues around and then the museum closed for the day. The walk back took us along the coast and we saw an impressive site with a moia which had its eyes put it, which they all had at one point.
We found a spot on the coast and sat and ate our lunches looking at the waves and the surfers trying to ride them. The waves were huge and we wondered how they were avoiding the nasty volcanic rocks they were surfing so close to.
We got some groceries and headed back to our room for some downtime. We had decided to eat a nice dinner downtown and looked in our guidebook for recommendations. The place we chose was right on the water, built on the rocks so that one protruded through the floor next to our table. We had more passion fruit pisco sours and split octopus pil pil and an excellent seafood soup while watching more surfers and landscape. The credit card had the weird Chilean custom of asking if you wanted to pay for everything or do it in installments. If you tried the latter, international credit cards no longer worked. A strange little foible.
We walked up to our dance performance space. Meg wanted to get in early but I didn't want to wait an hour for the thing to start. We had a coffee and then got in a very slow moving line to get in. It took us 25 minutes to get to the front of it but the woman who took our names for us yesterday had saved excellent seats for us, so all was not lost.
We went to the dining area and met up with our New York friends, who had the dinner that came with the show. We knew it cost more than our meal but heard that it wasn't any good, so we made the right decision.
The show started with a 30 minute documentary on how the group recruits young artists and tries to preserve local culture. The show had a large band of musicians who were able to sing along and change instruments regularly. The dancers were very fit and wearing little. They were able to perform moves that regular people would hurt themselves badly trying. There were at least 16 dancers and they varied the centre stage performers and were much better than some of the amateur night groups we have seen in other places.
Twice during the show they pulled audience members onstage to dance with them, which was amusing. At the end they invited everyone on stage to have pictures taken but it was a huge scrum and so we decided to leave with our New York friends. We hung out at their hotel (much fancier than ours with a garden and hot tub) and had a good talk.
We said goodbye to them and made our way home in the dark. This was less perilous than we thought as the streetlights were well lit. We got home late but well-entertained.
We got up, made ourselves breakfast and headed out to the museum on the edge of town. The maps here are definitely not to scale as it took more than 30 minutes to walk there and it was hard to find, again no street numbers.
It was worth the walk. It had bilingual information panels and an assortment of artifacts that explained the history of the island better than our guide did. They also had a temporary display of current artwork and a slideshow contrasting pictures from 70 years ago to the sites now.
We watched a video of western scientists trying different methods of hauling statues around and then the museum closed for the day. The walk back took us along the coast and we saw an impressive site with a moia which had its eyes put it, which they all had at one point.
We found a spot on the coast and sat and ate our lunches looking at the waves and the surfers trying to ride them. The waves were huge and we wondered how they were avoiding the nasty volcanic rocks they were surfing so close to.
We got some groceries and headed back to our room for some downtime. We had decided to eat a nice dinner downtown and looked in our guidebook for recommendations. The place we chose was right on the water, built on the rocks so that one protruded through the floor next to our table. We had more passion fruit pisco sours and split octopus pil pil and an excellent seafood soup while watching more surfers and landscape. The credit card had the weird Chilean custom of asking if you wanted to pay for everything or do it in installments. If you tried the latter, international credit cards no longer worked. A strange little foible.
We walked up to our dance performance space. Meg wanted to get in early but I didn't want to wait an hour for the thing to start. We had a coffee and then got in a very slow moving line to get in. It took us 25 minutes to get to the front of it but the woman who took our names for us yesterday had saved excellent seats for us, so all was not lost.
We went to the dining area and met up with our New York friends, who had the dinner that came with the show. We knew it cost more than our meal but heard that it wasn't any good, so we made the right decision.
The show started with a 30 minute documentary on how the group recruits young artists and tries to preserve local culture. The show had a large band of musicians who were able to sing along and change instruments regularly. The dancers were very fit and wearing little. They were able to perform moves that regular people would hurt themselves badly trying. There were at least 16 dancers and they varied the centre stage performers and were much better than some of the amateur night groups we have seen in other places.
Twice during the show they pulled audience members onstage to dance with them, which was amusing. At the end they invited everyone on stage to have pictures taken but it was a huge scrum and so we decided to leave with our New York friends. We hung out at their hotel (much fancier than ours with a garden and hot tub) and had a good talk.
We said goodbye to them and made our way home in the dark. This was less perilous than we thought as the streetlights were well lit. We got home late but well-entertained.
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| This moai has eyeballs! |
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| Happy hour next to the sea, note rock next to Meg. |
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| The cultural show. |
Nice hats. I guess I've seen photos of the moia with hats before, but I hadn't really appreciated them.
ReplyDeleteNever seen a photo of one with eyeballs before!
ReplyDeleteApparently they all had hats and eyes. Sort of like seeing Greek statues all painted up the way they actually were, just doesn't seem right.
ReplyDelete