Greetingfroms Easter Iisland...

where i´m blogging via dial-up service (or so it seems). It is so slow here that by the time I see this text , I´m too lazy to go back and correct my mistakes. So bear with me.

Easter Island is pretty rad. It is the world´s most remote, inhabitabited island. About 4000 people live here and almost all of them live in the island´s only town, Hanga Roa. The climate is subtropical and the days have been sunny and windy, with very sudden and violent downpours. There are more wild horses on the island than people (about 5000). In town there are lots of stray dogs, all quite friendly. The seafood is fresh and yummy. I think I´ve had enough tuna ceviche to last a lifetime.

I won´t give you a brief history of the island (it would take too long and be inaccurate, I´m sure), but suffice to say that the moai are totaly awesome. How the islanders managed to transport them over miles is beyond me. The coolest thing by far is Rano Raraku, the volcanic crater - quarry- where all the moai were carved. We hiked along the crater yesterday (both outside and inside the rim) and saw hundreds of moai-- some completed, some still attached to the quarry wall, some in the stage of being transported and others toppled, face down in the grass. We took lots of pictures and I will post them once I´m back in the States.

Remote as this place is, it´s not immune to American cultural influences. We heard Lauryn Hill in a resturant yesterday. Saw parts of Shrek the Third on DVD/TV (bootleg no doubt). And caught a glimpse of Paris Hilton on the front page of the newspaper.