Easter Island - Rapa Nui

This morning, in the dark, we safely arrived at easter island. As the sun rose we the dark island with little hills (highest volcano is around 200m high) turned into an intensive green paradise. This yellow green fresh grass gives quite a picturesque scene while growing on red red volcano soil. There are 4 (or5?) volcanos here -all inactive, one beautiful south see beach, many cliffs with the pacific waves strongly pounding against them and - the most important part - lots of ancient culture. Culture of people who have lived here hundreds of years ago, who have been killed, out so slavery or been brought to Tahiti and Peru for work from european (mostly spanish) and chilenan sailors. Thos who came back brough illnesses back, which almost killed all the rest of the people. There used to be up to 10-20000 people here, at one point of time only 111 were left. The beautiful nature with lots of rainforest trees had been cut down by wood companies. Now trees are slowly growing back (they planted them), around 5000 people live here (about 60% from the original population, 40% Chilenans) and the tourism interest is growing. Now they have to defend their island against too heavy tourism which would destroy a good part of the nature again.
Famous for this island are the Moai stone statues (onl head and throat) (UNESCO World heritage) here which can be seen all around the island, at the edge of the cliffs, facing inland.And it is famous for being the most distant inhabited island of the world - 3526km west of Chile, 4251km east of Tahiti, the next inhabited island (Pitcairn) a good 2000km away (our next stop).
More about Easter Island: look in Wikipedia. Here the link to the german site: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osterinsel

Pictures will hopefully follow. Too bad, I forgot my camera today, so no pix.

BUT: I have pix from last stop on Chile mainland and Robinson Cruesoe island.

Pictures of the Yacht Club Higuerillas, Vina del Mar, (trip to) Santiago
http://sailing.smichah.de/#51.0

At the yacht club

 10000nm!!!

 At the Yacht club

 Alita dirty coming out of the water - although not tooo bad. I am always nervous when I see this

 On the way to Santiago

 Yummy ice cream.

 In Santiago - Plaza de Armas

 Alita with her new shining body

 Running on water

 Feet out - I am just about to land. Hop

 Walk on water

 Lavender at the beach in Vina del mar

Here are the pictures of Robinson Crusoe Island:
http://sailing.smichah.de/#52.0

 Micha at Alexander Selkirk's lookout. 4,5 yrs he came here hoping to see a ship coming. One day it did - and took him home.

 My watch dogs who hiked 3 hrs with me.

 Rare to catch: a kolibri lady (shimmering green)

 and the guy

 View from beautiful, most exclusive Lodge (hotel) on Robinso Crusoe island

 View from top during my mule ride

 Looking to the other side from the top. What a change!

 Ha. Who is that??

 Love these big ears

 The story of a guy who was the inspiration for the book "Ronbinson Crusoe". Juan Fernandez was the first one to find the island, so it was named after him. But 2 hundred years later Alexander Selkirk made the island world famous - so the book inspired by his story gave the co.-name to the island

 Here the british navy bombed the german ship "Dresden" which was then sunk by the german captain so the brits would not get our ship. The munition (balas) can still be seen in the rocks (see picture above and below)