Easter Island!

Hi!  I've spent the last few days on Easter Island, which is an island in the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from anywhere.  I had to go on a five-hour journey by plane from Chile to get there.  I find it amazing that there are people living on such a small island, so far from any other people.  I felt like a very small stuffed traveller in the middle of such a huge ocean!

About three million years ago, a volcano erupted in the sea and created Easter Island.  I went for a walk up the volcano.  There was a big crater with a lake in the middle of it.  Don't worry, the volcano didn't erupt!  It's an extinct volcano.

People first travelled to Easter Island in canoes from another Pacific island.  They lived there for about a thousand years without communicating with anyone else in the world.  They lived a simple life using stone tools and living in houses that look a bit like a canoe turned upside down. Then, in the 1700s, ships from Europe started arriving on Easter Island.  One of them arrived on Easter Day.  That's why it's called Easter Island.

Visiting the Moai

One of the most interesting things about Easter Island is that there are hundreds of stone statues there, called moai.  The biggest ones are over twenty metres tall.  They are statues of the ancestors of the people who lived on Easter Island.  The islanders treated them as gods and thought they would protect them.  They are very impressive.  Unfortunately, the people started running out of food to eat and wood to make boats and then they destroyed the statues.  There are still some very beautiful ones but some of them are broken which made me very sad.

The other nice thing about Easter Island is the beach, where Robin's auntie and uncle went snorkelling in the sea.  There were lots of people surfing too.

I learned a few more words of Spanish while I was there, as most people speak Spanish as well as the local language (Rapa Nui).  In Spanish, 'un helado' is an ice cream and 'la pastelaria' is the cake shop.  I think these are very important words for a hungry traveller to know!

Spot the odd-one-out!

I was sad to leave Easter Island as it's such a beautiful place.  I'm going to Argentina soon though, so I'm pretty excited about that.  I'll blog again once I've got another stamp in my passport.  Adios!  (Bye!)