Good morning from Easter Island!
Saturday morning and the chefs are busy in the kitchen peeling potatoes.
This will be our last day on Easter Island. We will fly to Santiago tonight, go to some wineries in the morning tomorrow and then fly to Guayaquil, Ecuador in the late afternoon. Then we fly the next day to the Galapagos. But enough of the future, let’s hear about what we did today. 
Instead of more hikes, we asked to go look around the main town on the island. I will show you the highlights. 
This is the Catholic Church. Most of the Islanders are Catholics. There was also a small Seventh Day Adventist Church in town. That was a small dog sleeping on the steps.
I asked if we had time to look inside the grocery store. 
The market was small, about the size of a convenience store. I think most of the vegetables were grown on the island. You can bet that the ice cream and Lay’s potato chips were flown in from the mainland!
This is the post office, we would go here to get our passports stamped.
At the post office you could get your passport stamped. Easter Island is not a separate country, but they do have a cool stamp! 
Many people were selling locally grown vegetables and fruits.
Here are ads for a dance performance in town. We didn’t go. Had we gone we would have seen lots of muscular men smeared with oil. Steve could have seen women with costumes barely attached. Maybe next time!
We passed by the boat launch. We had originally hoped to go on a fishing trip to catch fish like the islanders in the traditional style, but it was too windy. Although, had we gone fishing this morning I would have missed my grocery store.
There were beautiful pineapples for sale on the street.
In the gift shop I had to prevent Steve from buying a Moai. They were very expensive, about $300-800! They were also very heavy. Not to mention that these Moai, unlike the Moai on the island had penises. No, that is not a beer keg tap on the Moai in the back of the photo! 
If it weren’t too heavy to travel with, the coral eye would have been pretty cool as a paper weight.
Steve liked the duck. 
In the gift shop they had the DVD from last year’s contest for sale. This was not Lilly our guide for several days, she won the contest years earlier.
These Moai carvings looked pretty interesting. I told Steve that he could display them in Lake George but not in Poughkeepsie. We didn’t buy anything. 
We had arranged to have massages before our next two days of airplane flights and car rides. It was pretty magical listening to the rain during the massage. 
Lunch was a turkey and cheese on a baguette. 
This was the best salad at lunch, all baby greens and no escarole. I hate escarole! 
Outside the airport flower leis were being sold to put on arriving guests. 
Good bye fake Moai! 
This guy was all garbed out for hiding in the gardens!
Steve is wearing the necklace that we got from Explora. It was made from shells. When we get home we will probably throw it in a junk drawer and forget it. Then we will pull it out in five years when we do a cleaning purge and wonder where we got it. 
Good bye Easter Island airport!
Steve had a Pisco Sour and I drank water. It’s five o’clock somewhere isn’t it? 
Good bye Easter Island! 
I called these Moai clouds! 
Dinner on the plane, the beef was tough and the cake overly sweet. 
After we landed we were met by JP and our driver and whisked off to the Ritz Carlton in Santiago. Did you know that there was a two hour time difference between Easter Island and the mainland? That’s what happens when you are on a five hour flight!
JP told me that the shirt that I had left in the hotel in Valparaiso was found. However it would have cost us $50 US to have it sent to us. We said “No thank you.” I was hoping that JP would have been able to pick it up at the hotel and keep it for us until today as he goes to Valparaiso every day from Santiago to give tours. We were given an option of getting up an hour earlier to pick it up before our adventures tomorrow but I treasure an hour of sleep more than the shirt.
Do you prefer Lays or Wise potato chips?
Do you prefer male bodies oiled or natural?
Do you have junk in your junk drawer?
Very entertaining!!Lots of fun