Christmas, Easter, and New Years

January 2, 2019


Spending Christmas on Easter Island looking at moais all over the island and even in the ocean, and New Years in Valparaíso with a lot of street art, getting sunburnt on the beach, and sitting on top of sand dunes.

Christmas was getting close, and can there be any better places to celebrate it than on Easter Island? There is… Easter Island is pretty expensive as it is, and due to Christmas some places were even more expensive than usual. But it was still a good time to go as I had found a fairly cheap flight and it was definitely a good side-trip. I don’t think I’ll manage Easter on Christmas Island though but that’s a later problem.

Easter Island is famous (and Unesco-listed) for its stone sculptures called moais and there are hundreds of then all over the island. Some of them stand by themselves, some lined up, some big ones, some relatively small ones. Most of them have been through quite a bit of weather over the years but they still look pretty majestic.

Moais
More moais

Not all of them were finished. The top photo is from the quarry where pretty much all of them were chiselled out of the rock before being moved to their final locations. Legends say the statues walked themselves but science doesn’t quite agree. They must’ve had at least a bit of help. Ropes? Rolling on logs? Aliens? Who knows…

Easter Island was also a good place for some diving. I did one dive with a lot of corals, colourful fish, a turtle, and even a moai. This moai is an old movie prop so it’s not authentic but it is overgrown enough to fit in really well and made the dive more fun.

Underwater moai. Photo by Anna Quinn.

A lot of the old Polynesian culture of the island has been lost and forgotten, and the locals are working on maintaining and passing on what they still got. That includes a lot of dancing and I went to a pretty good dance show. Only an hour long, but it was one intense hour. They were going at full speed pretty much non-stop, dripping of sweat.

Polynesian dance show

Easter Island was very interesting, but it is a small and pretty expensive island so five days was enough to not break the budget completely. After Christmas it was time to get back to the mainland and Valparaíso.

Valparaíso is supposed to be the place in Chile for New Years, and pretty cool to visit outside of New Years as well. The entire city is full of really cool street art and you find new things around every corner. Its historic centre is also a Unesco world heritage.

Street art in Valparaíso

Along the coast the city has grown together with other cities so I went north one day to check out Viña del Mar and Concón. Viña del Mar felt a lot like a beach resort with huge apartment complexes overlooking the beach. The beach is pretty good and I did stay there for a good hour (and got myself a bit sunburnt).

Beach in Viña del Mar

A lot of people told me I should go to Concón but I can’t remember exactly why. And the town itself was not at all impressive. I’m actually still not sure if we got to the real town or just to a new area of unfinished apartment complexes but there didn’t seem to be much. They do have one thing though that makes up for it. Sand dunes! They’re not super high but enough to be a workout to get up. People go there to sandboard or to just have a drink and enjoy the view over the bay, especially at sunset. Bring a sweater, the winds are super cold when the sun starts setting.

Sitting on top of a sand dune in Concón
Sand dune sunset

And then of course there’s the New Year. The party started with a barbecue at the hostel followed by a viewpoint for the fireworks and finally parties on the streets all over the city. Happy New Year!


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