Easter Island—Finally!

Imagine this: in the middle of a cool, Chilean night, a silvery plane pierced the sky. Four hundred feet from a peculiarly-shaped bush, a llama stared at the plane, its eyes blank of emotion. It had seen these entities before, but knew not what they meant—those silver birds that were unforgiving in their paths.


Gretchen and I had a wonderful time in the Atacama, but unfortunately, we had to leave for our next destination, Easter Island. We had booked an early morning plane, hoping to arrive on the island and explore its renowned beaches before it got too chilly. At the airport, we were met with quite a pleasant surprise!

I apologize for the weird picture-ness. I got lazy and simply copied/pasted. For future pictures, I will actually redraw the people so they fit the background better. Or I'll just post pictures cause I'm lazy. Also, look, Air Canada!

Tea came! She bore news that Bruney would also be coming along on our next destination (after Santiago) since I still need to draw her as well to—drum-roll as I whip out random.org's random coordinates generator—Japan! Wow. That would be quite a huge leap from Chile. (Any suggestions to not go to Japan will be considered. That was just a random pick.)

Nonetheless, Tea said she would be coming to Easter Island with us! So we changed our boarding passes so we could sit next to each other (in a row, yay!), and excitedly got on the plane. Well, the plane part was boring, so I won't talk much about it. I did manage to fiddle around on my laptop for a while, and I've managed to memorize a few basic UNIX commands thanks to unixkcd. (Who knew "kill" meant transporting a terminator to 1984?)

Anyway. We got off the plane in the afternoon, before sunset. This really nice guy, Mark, from one of the guest houses on the island, came up to us and asked if we needed a place to stay. We said we were looking for a hotel, and he offered to drive us there. Now, before you get all suspicious about why a perfect stranger would offer to give us a ride in his car to some presumably unknown destination, this is apparently the norm among Easter Island guest hotel guides. So we hopped into his car and arrived at our hotel a short while later.

Here's a picture of our beautiful place that we will be staying in:

Mark told us that the food in "downtown" Hanga Roa, the only major town on the island and where we were right now, was pretty good, and that we should try some of it out—of course, after we go to the beach and check out the gorgeous sunset. I was really excited, because I love, love, love sunsets. They're top on my list of things I love, along with shiny things and sparkly erasers (although Jack says that the blood-red sunset in the mountains are the most beautiful things ever, drawn from his experience living in central Minnesota).

So, of course, we had to pay a visit to the Hanga Roa port. Isn't it coincidental that Hanga Roa faces west, perfect for a sunset? Or maybe it faces west just for the sunset? I guess it's just like the chicken and the egg—we'll never know for sure.

After the sunset, which was absolutely magnificent, I declared that I was hungry, and so we decided to find something good to eat. The most famous restaurant on the island had to be Te Moana, but we had to reserve early to get seats, and in my haste and tiredness, I had completely forgotten to do so. La Taverne du Pêcheur is another good restaurant that specializes in seafood, but it's really expensive. Granted, we had an unlimited budget because I say so and I am omnipotent in this trip, so we decided we would go there last, to treat ourselves to some "gourmet" food.

Mark had told us that there were some places around town that sold cheap empanadas, and so we went around town in searching for such a place. Well, we found one, right next to a market, and those empanadas were really delicious! We were going to take a picture of one of us eating an empanada, but decided we would just share a picture of the actual thing instead.

We went back to the hotel early that night, and woke up really early the next morning (at 6:30, which is very early for me unless I had to go to school, which effectively does not exist right now). Next on our agenda: the Moai!

For those who have not been privy to the Easter Island culture, Moai are those stone face-statues scattered around Easter Island that were used to commemorate the deceased. They are placed upon stands called Ahu, and we should not step on the Ahu because that would be disrespectful towards the dead.

Most of the Moai sites around the island are free to visit, so we rented a Jeep and drove around the island along the major road, oohing and ahhing over all of the Moai. We stopped at a few of them, including the most famous Ahu Tongariki and Ahu Akivi. We reached Ahu Tongariki in the morning, and had a brunch of pescado a la parrilla (I'm sure there are accents somewhere, but since I am not familiar with Spanish, I am not sure where—also, this is grilled fish) and bread prepared by the wonderful cooking staff at the hotel.

When we were about to leave, a crowd of other tourists had arrived, preparing to eat lunch at this famed location. Good thing we were early! We (mostly Tea, who is the only one here who can drive right now) drove on in the Jeep, often staring at the ocean and its glimmering prettiness. By the time we got back to Hanga Roa, it was already late afternoon, and we were starving! I found some leftover tortilla de rescoldo in my backpack (back from Atacama), so we munched on some of that with the pebre, a sauce made with coriander, onions, olive oil, garlic, and ground peppers. It was delicious (I should find a synonym for "delicious"), but not nearly satisfying enough. So of course, we went to another restaurant and had some chanfaina (see below), this traditional soup of beef or lamb with a bunch of other things added to it. I wasn't too big on the blood, but I liked the potatoes. I like potatoes a lot.

We went back to the hotel and caught up on some rest and reading about all the things that happened to our friends back at home. I was really sleepy (since I had woken up so early), so I fell asleep first, and I have no idea what Gretchie or Tea did afterwards. But we woke up pretty early the next day, this time to go to Rano Raraku!

Rano Raraku is a crater volcano, but it's famous because most of those Moai—those things we saw the day before?—were carved from this mountain. Of course, there are tons of half-completed Moai lying around. I don't really know why.

It took us most of the day to climb up the volcano and see the crater and the island all around us and then to climb down again. Some girl who was just climbing down from the crater as we were climbing up complimented our ponchos. She was wearing a really pretty chamanto as well. Anyway, here's a picture at the top:

We had some really good ave pimienta (diced chicken meat sandwich with red peppers) for lunch, and we got back down, we had some pastel de choclo, which is similar to a shepherd's pie. You can tell that I am a huge food fan. Chilean food is absolutely mouth-watering, and I can't believe I've been missing out on so many wonderful dishes all my life.

The next day was planned to be a day of relaxation. We woke up reasonably early (at 7:30, an hour later), and went down to Anakena, which is renowned for its white sand beaches. The water was chilly at this hour, so we just sunbathed on the beach and watched some guys surf. One of the guys kept falling into the water, despite the other guys trying to help him.

After a few hours of nice relaxation on the beach, we went over to Motu Nui, where we picked up the snorkeling gear Mark had reserved for us earlier. I had never been snorkeling before, and I was kind of scared at first, but it was really fun once I got used to the whole thing.

Tea caught a lion-fish in her hands by accident, and after she let it go it would not leave her alone. It was so adorable! Which reminds me, we (Gretch and I) still have to ship Owen his alpaca, but I suppose that can wait for a while.

After a whole day around water, what better place to dine for the evening but the famed seafood place, La Taverne du Pêcheur? After all, I had promised we would come back here on our last day, and we would be departing the next day. So we all indulged ourselves with seafood. Tea ordered the ostiones a la parmesena, scallops with melted butter and grilled Parmesan cheese. Gretchie ordered the congrio frito, deep-fried conger eel, and I ordered the machas a la parmesena, similar to Tea's except mine were clams.

Here are the pictures of our dishes, respectively:

Sadly, we had to leave early next morning to go back to Santiago (without even a chance to visit Rano Kau, which supposedly had a beautiful view). Well, it was certainly a fun time in Easter Island, especially with Mark and the hotel crew, and none of us could wait for the next destination!

Santiago, here we come—hasta luego! Or until whenever the next update comes, which could be a very, very long time away.


OOH*:

As I was walking into my US class today, I realized that I forgot to add a "works cited" to the end of my paper. So I told my US teacher I would hand her a new copy during lunch. I had gym/health right before lunch, and so when I walked out of class to go to the library, I saw Vincent, who was walking the opposite way to go to gym.

"Hey," I waved.

"Hi," Vincent said. "Oh, I have to ask you something."

"Okay, what is it?"

"I know you're not going, but, if you were, would you have gone to prom with me?"

Oh, uh. "Yeah, I would."

"Oh, okay."

"Are you going?" I asked him.

"No, it's right before AP week."

"Oh, right."

The two APs he's taking are in the second week, which was the same problem I have with my chem test. I have no idea who planned prom to be on May 8th, but it makes no sense at all. Unless you're not taking any APs, but I have a feeling a decent percentage the grade is taking some sort of AP test (there are so many of them, after all), so it still makes no sense. At all.

But enough of me ranting.

(I have also noticed that Vincent's hugging period is progressively growing. And to think all of this began with Amanda's hugging spree back when he was reluctant to hug people. Ahh. Life's unpredictable like that.)

*For abbreviation clarifications, see earlier posts relating to the round-the-world trip.

P.S.: All names mentioned in the trip that are not Gretchen, Tea, Bruney, or me are made up by me and have no basis in real life or those mentioned in the nickname spreadsheet or I was too lazy to add them in and stuff. Most of them won't be mentioned again, so I just made stuff up.

P.P.S.: Some of the pictures do not correspond with geographical location, most notably the ones that don't show specific geographical identities. Don't be confused if you see a similar picture elsewhere. Also, none of the pictures really belong to me, except those little people at the top. I would cite sources like I did last time, but it's a long and hard process and I'll probably do it later. For now, everything's just from Google Images, and they're even all from the first page with my keywords.

It Takes Two To Love

Today, for English, we had to bring in an image of what we thought represented success. I (partly inspired by Tea), chose a scene from xkcd, and said that it represented how success meant something different for everyone, regardless of what the "norm" dictated.


Of course, I said it in a way more choppier way, probably because when I usually write things, I jump from one thing to another, so I do not have a clear, cohesive string of consciousness. I wonder what it would be like if I could put my thoughts into a pensieve? I don't know if anyone would be able to successfully navigate my memories.


Anyway, onto more choppy thoughts, I had gym during the lunch period today. Since everyone gets out early for gym (except those stuck in health or swimming or Argon, who changes really fast when he's going to gym but really slow when he's coming out), Nyx and Dora and Tierra were still in the cafeteria by the time I got there.


The three of them giggled when I arrived. When prodded why, Dora said, "Oh, we were just talking about you."
"About what?"


"Prom," Nyx said. "And who you're going to go with."


"It'll be really sweet if you go with Vincent."


I was about to say something along the lines of, no, I'm not so sure about that idea, when Vincent came by and said hi.


"Oooh," Tierra—or someone else, I couldn't quite tell—said. "Vincent, ask Ginny to go with you to prom!"


That was rather, uh, straightforward and to the point. Vincent looked really confused. I didn't blame him.


"Come on, ask her!"


After much persuasion, Vincent finally conceded. "Okay. Will you go to prom with me?"


There was a small cheer at the table, punctuated with Vincent's remark, "So, what is this prom thing?"


That could be quite an issue. The topic slowly dissolved as Vincent had to go and the discussion diverged towards who Dora should go with—with a random remark of "Ginny shouldn't go with Dino" inserted somewhere and Tierra's question of "I don't know this Dino guy. I just know that everyone doesn't like him (this statement is obviously not true)." After the three of them left, Tea came, and we went on discussing this prom "problem" while lamenting (this is one of my favorite words of the week, it seems) that no one will actually ask us out. (Vincent doesn't count. He was confuzzled into agreeing, and I still don't know if he comprehends the extent of what prom means, although I do know that he would hate it.)


So here, as a cheer-us-upper (since the laws of the Internet and Nephria decree that anything is possible), I will confidently proclaim that there will be tons of guys who will ask both of us (and everyone else who belongs to our possibly date-less group) to prom, and they will have to wait in line and hand us résumés and have us closely inspect their possible behavior before we decide who we want to go with. Or, to make life easier, the guys that we want to ask us will do so, and we'll skip the whole "application" part of the process and choose directly.


Anything's possible.


(Except "forcing Dino into the corner on the third floor where there are no tables and making him ask me to prom with various suspicious methods" is not an option, ever. Even in Nephria.)


However, since I accidentally spilled my bag at the end of lunch, I was late to calc. Mrs. James was about to ask me a question (that I most likely would not have known the answer to because I haven't reviewed any of the material yet in lieu of math packets and general procrastination), but Jay saved me by blurting out the answer per usual. As I approached my seat, Dino said, "I don't trust Ginny," and waved to me. Calc itself went by pretty fast, with relatively few "butt-jokes" compared to yesterday. This unit is going pretty well so far, I must say. I'm surprised. (Of course, all of these formulas could pose a huge problem, as I can't remember formulas. It's sad.)


After class, I asked Dino if he was going to take AIME tomorrow. He said no, and Sonny mistook it for ARML.


"Wait," he said. "So you were the only one representing our school and you didn't make it?"


"No," Dino said. "It's something else. And no, I'm not taking it. Don't worry about it."


The last remark comes from me asking if he had gotten his test rescored. I have no idea why he thinks I'm "worrying" about it, but it has been previously proven that he is strange, and therefore I am allowed to be puzzled.


By this time, we had reached my stat classroom, so we said goodbye and he strutted on in his strange hands-holding-the-backpack-straps pose towards what I predicted (correctly) was gym. After stat (because stat was kind of boring and we just got our tests back and fiddled with the calculator), I stood outside the math team classroom as I always do, because it's across the hall from my stat classroom and I usually just wait for the people in the classroom to leave and then go in.


This time, Dino was already there by the time everyone inside had left. He went in first, and took a seat and sat down and did nothing. Really. Nothing at all. After I put my bag down, went outside, waved to Gretchie, and turned back, I saw him barely out the door, looking at us (or Irving down the hall, but I'd like to say that it was us) before scooting back into the classroom.


But that's enough musing for the day. I have to do all the other stuff I have to do (like practice mock questions for AIME and generally doing homework, perhaps), so go over to Gretchie's post for our next several days in Chile! (I am still working on shipping a llama back home. It will happen. One day.)