Adios

We've had an awful lot of this sort of thing on this trip. Not that I'm complaining: it's been great, and an absolute revelation when we were in Lima, compared with my previous visit, when I had one good meal in three weeks. I'm just sorry I have to go home now to my own cooking - night flight to Auckland looming, yay. Not.

We left Easter Island early this morning and arrived mid-afternoon Santiago time, just about the right timing, South American-wise, for lunch at a winery outside the city. Matetic, it was called, and it also has a beautiful hacienda on the estate, where you can stay in 100+ year-old rooms that are so restful and elegant your heart slows down the moment you step over the threshold. What a lovely weekend that would be: a day poking around in pretty Valparaiso on the coast, maybe, then some wine-tasting before stopping in at La Cosana for dinner at the antique dining table and more of Matatic's red stuff. Or white, of course.

I always feel a fraud doing wine-tastings, having once confused chardonnay with cabernet on the wine list, to my great humiliation, and have been confident in the past only of being able to tell white from red in the glass. But I've learned with horror on this trip that there's such a thing as white cabernet, so now I've lost my nerve completely. But as long as you don't ask me any questions about it, I'll happily knock back a glass, thanks.

Birds, boats and bikes

They were very serious about today's walk up to and around the crater rim. "It's a steep climb," they said. "We have sticks." I almost had second thoughts, but went ahead anyway - and it was a piece of weasel. The 132 Rahui Road steps did me proud, and I was up that piffling slope like a mountain goat - of which there were some, standing on the 45-degree crumbling 250-metre cliff that we walked along the top of, and which the lodge people hadn't thought worthy of mention. Nor the bull that was on our other side.

So it wasn't steep, but it was a long and sweaty walk, three hours up to the crater and around the rim to the ancient ceremonial village that's been reconstructed after the British came through heavy-footed, picking out the best bits of native art and leaving the rest rubble, tch. The views out over the sea were splendid, all blue water and black rocks and sweeping squalls of rain that fortunately didn't bother us.

We were down on that brilliantly blue water after lunch, bouncing out on a boat for a circuit of the islands that are part of the old birdman ritual which makes popping down to the henrun for the eggs seem such a doddle in comparison (climb down cliff - see above - swim 1.5km to the islands, avoid getting grated on the rocks, wait a couple of weeks, possibly, get a sooty tern's egg, and race back to the top of the cliff again, egg intact). They don't do it anymore - life is much more laid-back in Hanga Roa these days. This is about as busy as the main street gets:

Blue + white + black = gold

That's not a formula you'll find in any art room or paint shop, but it worked for me today. After a whole nine hours' sleep - luxury! - we went to the quarry where all the moai, or heads, were carved, and marvelled and puzzled over the mystery of how these huge, heavy statues were moved from the one source all over the island, over such rough terrain that our vehicle frequently had to crawl along the unpaved roads. Beno, our local guide, had no problem: "It's mana," he said, meaning power, knowledge, skill.

Then we had a treat: taken along the coast to where our lunch had been laid out with sun umbrellas and chairs on the rough black basalt rocks where the (sorry) azure blue sea was breaking in a most spectacular fashion in white foam and spray just metres from where we stood with pisco sours, beer and - whole new taste sensation! - a Buck's Fizz made with fresh raspberry juice, which not only perfectly matched my top, but tasted wonderful. Then a buffet for lunch followed by fruit and the perfect chocolate brownie. Explora does know how to look after its guests, truly.

And after lunch, more moai and caves and cairns and walls, a walk along the coast, and then today's climax, the Rapa Nui first fifteen: a row of moai on an ahu, or platform. Just like rugby players, they didn't have much above the eyes, but they were impressive, impassive and inexplicable. I don't care what Beno says, they are a mystery.

Happy Easter

This is such an interesting place. For a start, how crazy to come to the most remote island on the planet and find yourself grumbling about slow download speeds and having to go and sit in the bar to get connected. But more importantly, here we are further away from civilisation than anywhere else, yet the island is the perfect example of how ruinous man can be to an environment: no native vegetation left, the place overrun by horses, the sea clearer than anywhere else, but nothing much to see in it because of over-fishing. I was more than a bit dismayed by all this, and the dead horse we walked past this morning (they roam freely and eat the seedpods of lupins, which kill them) was especially horrible for me - as well as smelly.

But things improved when we got to see the moai, the famous heads that I could never remember which way they faced. It's looking inland, people! Except for the ones that look seaward - but there are only 7 of them. Strangely, in most of my photos of this row of heads, there are only 6, and I was tempted to get a bit supernatural about the missing one (these are three metres high, how could I miss one?) but then I looked at all my horizons, 30 degrees off to a man, and blamed sheer fatigue.

But it's a puzzle, how these massive lumps of stone were carved in one crater and hauled across the island to stand along the coast. The aliens explanation is much neater than all the others - but tomorrow we go to the quarry and perhaps it will all be made clear. Or perhaps not...

On, on

They have hairless dogs in Peru, did you know? About the size of a Dobermann, but totally bald.

Today we had the city tour, of cathedrals and plazas and streets and suburbs and the coast, and an enormous and enormously long and very delicious lunch then more suburbs and painted houses and old-fashioned fishing boats and relaxed families. Then more eating and then packing up again and back to the airport for the next flight to Easter Island, leaving at midnight and arriving at 5am local time - don't ask me how long the flight is. I'm hoping to get my head down and not notice.

Then it's walking and climbing and looking at moai, carved stone heads - and probably more eating, at a guess. This, if you haven't got the message by now, is not a holiday. (But I am having fun.)

From all sides now

Today was all about the waterfalls, which we've now seen from the air, from the water, from the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side. The helicopter view would have been terrific, had I not been sitting at the back in the middle with a column in front of me, a large man with an iPad on one side and a keen photographer on the other - if you do it, it's sauve qui peut: race for the front seat. Because these falls are so spectacular, you mustn't miss any of them. (Thank goodness for live view on my camera - it got a better view than I was able to.)

We drove back to the Argentinian side to walk right along the edge of the falls on a metal walkway with huge catfish lurking below and delicate butterflies floating above, and it was amazing to see so much water pouring and roaring over the drop. But it's not just spectacular: it's pretty too, with fresh green grasses growing on rocks in the river, flowering plants on the islands, and the butterflies. It helped, too, that after two days of cloud and rain, today was brilliantly sunny, with rainbows everywhere. (When it's a full moon, you can go out at night to see the falls under moonlight with moonbows.)

And then it was time to pack up again without really enjoying our lovely hotel with its inviting pool and wandering coati and pretty rooms and all, sigh. So tonight I'm in another fancy hotel, in Lima, and it's 1am here, which means 3am in Brazil, and I still have my homework to do, sorting out my afternoon activities for tomorrow. "Think about it overnight," suggested Johanna, without apparent irony.

Dam fine

More cute coatis on the way to breakfast this morning. I'm soldiering on through epic jet lag and off-the-scale blood iron thanks to a paleolithic intake of red meat: possibly a connection? Who knows. Anyway, after yesterday's 'Whoa, nature showing off, here' moments with the waterfalls, today was about how man can whip up the odd marvel too, given some time and co-operation. So we were taken to the Itaipu Dam, 65 storeys high, 18km long, 20 turbines using 10 times the volume of the Falls... er, an hour? a day? The statistics became a blur, after a movie, a bus tour, the commentary - what is more impressive, is that it's a bi-national project by Brazil and Paraguay, the river forming their border. The construction, the maintenance, the power, they're all split 50:50 in a shining example of international co-operation.

Then lunchtime brought another revelation: my first churrascaria, a barbecue restaurant where you fill your plate with a selection of fresh salads and vegetables (or chips) and then a succession of waiters arrive at your table with what could be a heart attack on a stick, but is so delicious, who cares? We were offered from long skewers every type of barbecued meat imaginable, and some not (like chicken hearts) - filet mignon, rump steak, pork tenderloin, lamb, plus onions, cheese balls, sausages... all hot and crusty outside and meltingly tender inside. Delicious! And afterwards the completely unnecessary dessert selection recalled the very best in children's parties, with every permutation of sugar and cream possible. And it was only lunchtime!

At the bird park my zip toggle was gently examined by a toucan with his huge orange beak; a rhea came rushing excitably up to the fence and immediately fell asleep leaning against it; blue and yellow macaws swooped low overhead; we were frowned at by a harpy eagle and, happily, ignored by a large hairy tarantula; we went crazy trying to focus on super fast-forward hummingbirds and were draped with an anaconda; and my camera got into a snit and let me down, sniff.