{"id":2931,"date":"2014-01-23T15:50:48","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T23:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=2931"},"modified":"2014-01-23T15:50:48","modified_gmt":"2014-01-23T23:50:48","slug":"once-in-a-lifetime-easter-island-01212014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=2931","title":{"rendered":"Once in a Lifetime \u2013 Easter Island \u2013 [01\/21\/2014]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>There are some things, even with my amazing life, that you just think you\u2019re never going to get a chance to see. There are ports where you just know<\/i> you aren\u2019t going to be able to get off the ship \u2013 usually from previous experience. On the World Cruise, there\u2019s just one port like that, one port that the crew has almost always seen from afar and never set foot on because it\u2019s just too hard to get into.<\/p>\n

Easter Island.<\/p>\n

Except today. Today, by some incredible stroke of luck, the weather gods co-operated with us, presenting us with a sea so smooth that the tenders were able to navigate it with nary a bump (well comparatively for this area, \u201csmooth\u201d is a relative term), between that and a tender operation that ran better than anything I\u2019ve seen in four seasons on the flagship \u2013 we were granted nothing short of a miracle for this port: two, hour long windows, of crew shore leave.<\/p>\n

Not meaning that we could only stay off the ship for an hour at a time, those windows were just so that we could leave<\/i> the ship, once we were over there we could stay as long as we wished as long as we were back to work on time. The thing was \u2013 more the fool I \u2013 in the confidence that we are never<\/i> allowed off here, I had actually taken IPM, along with the Hostess; which makes me more grateful than ever that I have a good team here, because as soon as they were asked, our teammates stepped in and covered us, and we were able to meet up on shore, hail a taxi and head out through the truly isolated countryside.<\/p>\n

And I really do mean isolated. There\u2019s only one town on Easter Island, and once you get beyond its boundaries there\u2019s nothing but dry grass and the kind of rolling, thrashing waves that you think only exist in the movies. Herds of horses and cows roam the fields with no one in sight to tend them, they simply amble along the sides of the road, occasionally stopping the traffic altogether. Truly beautiful<\/i> horses though, at first I wasn\u2019t sure if they were wild or not, but considering they weren\u2019t at all skittish I suspect they must have belonged to someone somewhere on the island.<\/p>\n

Really, the cost of the taxi would have been worth it for the trip along the coastline. You just never see nature like that \u2013 or at least you see it so rarely that sometimes you stop thinking it even exists anymore.<\/p>\n

But we did of course have an ultimate destination. I mean, what else do you go to Easter Island for?<\/p>\n

Words can\u2019t really describe the Moi, they are so immense and so austere that you somewhat lose the power of description in the sight of them. You just\u2026stare. And then belatedly remember that yes you do have a camera with you, and you should probably use it because you\u2019ll likely never get another chance.<\/p>\n

When I was in Italy, I spoke of wondering what statuary would say if it could speak, nowhere is that thought more prominent than here. No one even truly knows where the Moai came from, though there are many many theories \u2013 it\u2019s almost impossible to imagine what they have witnessed. Perhaps it\u2019s because of them that the energy of this place seems to wipe you clean, to give you the feeling that you\u2019re somehow getting a fresh start. Some people may not see it that way, but for me? Today is definitely one of those days that somehow changes the way you see everything else.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are some things, even with my amazing life, that you just think you\u2019re never going to get a chance to see. There are ports where you just know you aren\u2019t going to be able to get off the ship … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[72,12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-world-voyage-2014","category-historical-sites","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-Lh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2933,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2931\/revisions\/2933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}