SOUTH AMERICA – PART 4

It was nice to get below 4,000 meters for a change to Sucre’s elevation of 2,800. Sucre, population 360,000, holds major national importance as an educational and government center, and it contains one of the best preserved Hispanic colonial and republican historic city centers in the Americas. The city has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and holds an important place in Bolivian history as the first capital of Bolivia before the fall of silver's importance as a global mineral commodity. Our hotel, Hostal Sucre, was housed in the former residence of a wealthy family from the Spanish colonial period that dates from the 1500s. The photo below shows the courtyard; the place has a lot of charm.

On Day 7, we strolled around downtown Sucre with our guide to see the highlights before boarding a bus to see the world’s largest collection of dinosaur footprints. The tracks were discovered in 1995 by a cement company mining limestone. The now almost vertical wall was once wet ground near a lake and paleontologists believe various species of dinosaurs walked there to drink water. Tectonic action is responsible for pushing the horizontal sediment layers to the position they’re in today. The photo below shows the tracks of a sauropod, a herbivore that walked on four legs at this very place more than 65 million years ago!

The Parque Cretacico includes a nice interpretive centre but, like other Bolivian tourist attractions, the infrastructure around the site is very basic. That evening, our group dined at a fancy restaurant. We paid for the guide’s dinner and we both had steak; the bill came to $63.35! A meal like that would have cost us $300 back home.

On Day 8, we left the hotel early bound for a hike on part of the Inca Trail. It was mostly downhill for 4.5 kilometers and the views were fantastic.

On Day 9, we took a couple of short flights from Sucre to get us back to the trip starting point, La Paz, and said our goodbyes before everyone went their separate ways. I truly hope that Bolivia will survive the current political and economic unrest and someday achieve its potential, for the sake of the people who are suffering through the crisis. The Bolivian example shows yet again that socialism cannot work. The country has isolated itself and will need “friends” to climb out of this mess. It's not hard to imagine why foreign investment is lacking in Bolivia, since the government can take control of a company’s assets with the stroke of a pen.

As for tourism, the potential is there in the form of world-class attractions like the Uyuni Salt Flats, the dinosaur footprints, and the Inca Trail, to name just a few. But the lack of adequate infrastructure and all the negative publicity about what’s happening in Bolivia will deter people from visiting.

After two days of hard travel, we landed in Santiago, capital of Chile, and spent a relaxing day there. Chile is a developing country with a high-income economy compared to its neighbours, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, and is one of the most economically and socially stable nations in South America. Chile is a long, narrow country bordered by the Andes Mountains in the east and the Pacific Ocean the west, and its shape reminds me of a razor clam (coutelier), complete with the foot, Tierra del Fuego, at the bottom. The distance from North to South in Chile is about the same as the distance from East to West in Canada. Chile’s per capita GDP, the best measure of economic well-being, ranks it below Uruguay, but above Argentina and well above Colombia and Bolivia.

Santiago is Chile’s biggest city, with a population of about 7 million, almost half the country’s total. The city center is by far the nicest we’ve seen on this trip, and Plaza des armas is a lovely place to spend a Sunday afternoon people watching, which is exactly what we did. There are many pedestrian streets and a bustling central market, together with high-end stores and lots of shops. The Metropolitan Cathedral, located on Plaza des armas, is a very imposing and impressive building, inside and out. The contrast between this country and the previous two we’ve visited is striking. People here are far more relaxed, probably because they’re not struggling to survive day-to-day.

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is but a tiny speck in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and its isolation makes one wonder how humans ever found their way here. The island is one of the world's most remote; the nearest inhabited land is Pitcairn Island, population 60, 2,075 kilometres (1,289 mi) away. The nearest point on the South American continent lies in central Chile, 3,512 km (2,182 mi) away. That’s about the distance between Charlottetown and Winnipeg. Rapa Nui was a “bucket list” destination for me. We had planned to include it in a fall 2020 South American tour, but COVID put the kibosh to that. It’s not an easy place to get to but, after three hard weeks on Intrepid tours, we needed a break in a more relaxed setting.

Oral history and archaeological evidence suggest that Polynesians arrived here from the Marquesas or the Cook Islands around 1,100 AD. Europeans first arrived in 1772 and brought with them devastating diseases for which the local population had no immunity. The island also has a history of slave abductions. By 1867, less than 1,000 islanders remained from a population estimated at 15,000 at its height, before European contact.

The island is small, just a bit bigger than La Région Évangéline (163 sq km vs. 130), but it’s packed with interesting things to see. We arrived at the tiny airport early afternoon after a five-hour flight and checked into our modest lodgings before taking a stroll through downtown Hanga Roa, the only sizeable settlement, with a population of about 7,500. It’s a touristy place but not overrun like so many we’ve been to, and it didn’t take us long to find our first Moai. These five overlook Hanga Roa.

On Day 2, we explored Hanga Roa on foot before picking up our rented Suzuki 4WD, and headed out for an orientation drive. It took us about five hours to drive the main roads and make our way around the Island. Along the way, we stopped to see the best of the Moai sites, Ahu Tongariki, Ahu Nau Nau, and Te Pito Kura. The first one features a line of fifteen statues, the second has five complete statues, four with top hats, and the third is a toppled Moai thought to be the tallest on the Island when it was standing. But my favourite is the lone Moai (third photo) that overlooks the line of fifteen; he‘s the most fearsome looking.

More than 900 Moai have been identified. They were carved out of volcanic rock (tuff) and erected on platforms (ahus) from the time of first settlement until about 1500. The tallest is 10 meters high and weighs over 80 tonnes! Easter Island’s National Park is of course a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After a delicious meal of empanadas, we ended our Day 2 watching the sunset at Orango, the southwest tip of the Island.

Day 3 began with a hike around the crater of Rano Kau, an extinct volcanic near Hanga Roa. The crater is almost 1.6 km wide and is hard to fit into a single photo.

From the crater, we drove toward the eastern end of the island to the place called Rano Raraku, another extinct volcano. What makes this site so important is that it supplied the stone for 95% of the Moai on Rapa Nui. There are many incomplete statues in the quarry, and some are located high on the crater wall, making them almost inaccessible. It’s hard to imagine why the Rapa Nui spent so much of their resources carving these massive statues weighing many tonnes, how they transported them to all corners of the island, and how they erected them. Many of the Moai at Rano Raraku are incomplete and were left in place for reasons that are not fully understood. Downslope of the quarry are several that are partially buried to their shoulders in the spoil from the quarry.

Archaeologists believe the statues were a representation of the ancient Polynesians' ancestors. The Moai face away from the ocean and towards the villages as if to watch over the people. Although the exact method of moving the Moai from the quarry to their resting places is the subject of speculation, it is generally believed that they were “walked”. Teams of workers would have worked to rock the upright Moai back and forth, securing it with ropes, creating the walking motion and holding the moai upright. This is consistent with the natives’ oral history. Whatever the true answer, it remains an amazing engineering feat. The first photo shows Elva standing beside several Moai that are partially buried at the quarry at Rano Raraku and the second shows the slope from a distance.

Rapa Nui turned out to be just the relaxing break we needed. We enjoyed going off by ourselves without a guide and without a schedule. The people here are kind, considerate, and laid back. The streets of Hanga Roa are not very busy, no one seems in a rush, no one leans on the horn to express their frustration, and one eventually gets used to the nighttime barking of stray dogs and the crowing of jealous roosters. If it wasn’t so far off the beaten track, we’d come back. But then, that’s probably what has kept this treasure the way it is, and it’s best that it stay that way.

There is however one major flaw in Rapa Nui’s tourism product. Most of the important sites are in the National Park. It costs $112 CDN per person for a park pass which is steep enough, but here’s the kicker. You can’t visit any of the National Park sites without a guide, and that will cost you another $100 CDN per person per day. That just doesn’t work for independent travellers like us. We’ve experienced enough guided trips to know that we don’t like them; too much useless information from a know-it-all who won’t stop talking. It’s a great make-work strategy but not one we like.

Over the past month, I’ve lost two acquaintances, former neighbour Bobby MacKay and travel companion Dr. Dave Crocker. Although very different in their lifestyle choices, both were good and capable men, men who had plans, and who never imagined that the end would come when it did. It’s a good lesson. Carpe diem!