Seeing more of Rui Napa

After More Chilling

After another day relaxing we were booked on a full day trip of the island. This was a full minibus so nice to be with some other tourists.

All aboard

Once settled on the bus it was clear our guide was brilliant going between English and Spanish without a pause or losing our interest. Whichever language he spoke you could feel his enthusiasm.

We visited various sites seeing a village that had been created to see how the early inhabitants lived plus also seeing the remains of the original ones. We saw more of the moai statues. Most of these are laying flat either because they broke during their transportation or because during the battles between the different groups they knocked each others over. The ones standing now have all been put back up in the last 50 years. We also learnt that all the trees in the island are less than a 100 years old as the island suffered complete deforestation due to trees being used to move the statues and then an infestation of rats destroying what remained!

We walked across on hill where some statues and been stood up again and many more were still laying down, it's an amazing sight.

The island has lots of dogs roaming about they seemed to be owned by locals but are allowed complete freedom. There are also cows and horses but only some seem to be kept in fields. This meant on today's trip we had dogs chasing the bus, horses walking out on to the road and we had to wait for around 10 horses to cross in front of us. The cows were happy standing in the road creating a slalom for the bus to go through. Even in the main town we have come across horses just meandering about.

The end of our trip was an hour on the beach.

It was a good day giving us more views of the island and a better insight of it's history.

Plan Your Relaxing Day

A couple of other things we've noticed....everyone drives slowly, especially compared to the rest of South America. Pedestrian is king here. And, a lot less rubbish, recycling is really important and it's a very clean island. We think the recycling and lack of rubbish has probably continued from covid when the Island paid the local tourist guides to clean up the coast and scuba divers to remove rubbish from the ocean.