Carnival and Easter Island recap

We have now arrived in Rio (strangely pronounced Hio by the Brazilians) de Janeiro for Carnival. It´s a bit strange to be in a big city after a while on some small little islands.

We have just come in from Easter Island. Karen and I agree that it is definitely one of the coolest places we have ever been. I´m sure you´ve seen pictures before, but they really don´t do the place justice. It really has to be seen to be believed. Between us I think we have over 300 pictures of the place to sort through - from just a 3 day visit! We´ll try to post some of those soon.

By the way, we got stood up on Valentine´s Day! On our first day on the island we took a half day tour which was good. We told the tour guide to sign us up for the full day tour for the 14th. So at the appointed time, we waited and waited to be picked up from our hotel. When we called, they said they were on their way. Then 5 minutes later they called to tell us they had no seats left. Grrr...

Well, unfortunately all of the cars on the island were rented out (or so our hotel host told us) so what were we to do? We had to cover about 50 kms of the island in order to see what we wanted and since only 1/3 of the island is paved, biking didn´t seem like a good option and some of the horses we saw looked a bit wild. Across the road from our hotel was a place renting out ATVs. Although neither Karen or I had ever been on one before, let alone driven one and the fact that it had gears and we only drive automatic, we decided to go for it.

After about 10 minutes of training (in Spanish), we were on our way. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because we saw what we wanted to see, got to spend lots more time at the sites we liked, and we both got to drive the ATV which was really fun. Plus we saved ourselves some money as the ATV was half the price of the tour we wanted. In New Zealand they were charging about US$50-$70 per person to try an ATV offroading for an hour or two. On Easter Island we got the ATV for US$50 for the whole day and we actually got to use it for practical purposes. Plus we got to go on the dirt roads on the island and do offroading anyway.

[The following paragraph is not to be read by any of our parents]

The funniest part of renting an ATV was the warning sticker on the ATV that noted:
- always wear a helmet (oops, they forgot to give those to us; actually, they didn´t have any to give us)
- never drive the ATV on public roads (I guess that doesn´t really apply on remote islands with only 3,000 people on it)
- never carry a passenger as it inhibits control (well, it was better than renting two of the things)

Anyway, the ATV was a great experience and was quite practical and allowed us to see everything we wanted. It worked out much better than taking a tour. Plus we sort of got the hang of this whole manual shift thing, I think. Although the ATV did keep stalling towards the end of the day, so I hope we didn´t wreck the gearbox or anything.

And let me reiterate - Easter Island is one of the coolest places on the planet. Book your trips now!