However, in another way, Chile was like Equador in that we had to disembark on deck 5 and walk down a long set of stairs in both places. It had to do with the height of the pier and the height of the tides. That stairway sure seemed endless when we were coming back to the ship after a long day on a field trip.
The first day in Valparaiso, mom and I took a city orientation tour that showed us the steep mountain roads in the Valparaiso (Valpo) area. They have 45 hills, and many of the hills have staircases or ascensores (funiculars) to help people climb the hills. The houses and apartments are all built on the hills. Many of the houses are original Victorians, which were brought in pieces from Great Britain in the late 1800s and put together here. These houses are being restored, and are painted in various bright colors.
(The Andes -- Photo by Karen)On this same orientation tour, we visited Viña del Mar, Valaparaiso's rich cousin. Viña is where the rich people have their condominiums, and where there are wonderful shopping malls and museums. Valpo is where the normal people live. Though it is winter in Chile, it was not very cold on the coast -- more like 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit in Valpo and Viña. However, the Andes were covered with snow, and many of our folks spent a day or two at various ski resorts in the mountains.
Easter Island
My big trip was Easter Island, or, as the idigenous people call it, Rapa Nui. For reasons unknown to us, LAN Chile bumped 20 of our people at the last minute, leaving only 45 spaces for our people on the trip to Easter Island. This caused a great deal of trouble, because the cancellations were made at random. In any case, I was one of 39 people to go on this trip and it was enjoyable.
We flew on the 17th, and landed about 1 pm. There were some difficulties with the travel agent on the island, but Wade and the field program staff quickly resolved the schedule difficulties. We stayed at two different hotels. Mine was the Hotel Oceania. One thing you need to know if you plan to go to Easter Island is that as far as I know, there really aren't actual four-star hotels on the island.
I had written a long description of the various sites and sights we saw on Eastern Island, but Blogger ate it ... Suffice it to say, we saw a lot of ahu and moai (the statues), stumbled over a lot of volcanic rocks, and climbed a lot of mountains. It was a fascinating trip. Apparently Thor Heyerdahl, while inciting interest in the history of Easter Island in the 1940s and 1950s, didn't get it right. The general concensus now is that the Rapa Nui people originally came from the Marquesas Islands, not from Peru, as Heyerdahl had proposed.
One interesting thing about the moai is that their features are different, each representing actual features of a specific king. These statues were set up near each village so that the king could protect the village in death as he had in life. (Oh, yes, all the moai are male, except for one that is in the island's museum.)
