Hiking on Easter Island. Why the Armada de Chile Came. How the Cap’n Fixed the Wind Generator. The Peculiarities of Hiking Through Barbed Wire. Through the Surf in the Dinghy

Hiking on Easter Island Why the Armada de Chile Came. How the Cap’n Fixed the Wind Generator. The Peculiarities of Hiking Through Barbed Wire. Through the Surf in the Dinghy The beginning is here >> Ten minutes later, the roar of powerful engines sounds, and a grey-and-orange launch appears alongside, bearing the words “ ARMADA de CHILE ”.... ...We’re in trouble after all... The captain is hanging from the mast while I cautiously poke my head into the cockpit. There is no punitive delight over yesterday’s incident on the Armada crew’s good-natured faces; they are simply circling around, watching me send 19 mm and 10 mm spanners up to the masthead. By now, there are already three yachts at the anchorage. The Swiss arrived during the night, a couple around 70 years old. The Armada pulled away from us and made a lap of honour around their boat. But no one is hanging from their mast, no spanners are swinging on ropes—nothing to see. The valiant warriors paid a visit to the young Swedes and sped off into the ocean. Phew... we got away with it! They’re not going to put us in prison :). Work at the masthead The captain dismantled and reassembled the wind generator up the mast. It still didn’t work. He had to remove it and lower it down; by then the wind had picked up a little, and the wind generator was swinging menacingly on the rope, threatening to clobber the captain. Since we girls weren’t much use here, we decided to go hiking without Andrey. Nastya took the helm of the dinghy, while Lada and I clung tightly to the thwart. Engine on! Off we go. Dodging all the breaking waves, we squeeze into a tiny dock and secure the dinghy with lines on both sides (otherwise it will be smashed against the rocks). A fisherman’s wife came running over with a box of avocados as a gift. We fiddled with the outboard for a while; the starter cord had jammed. Elias, the Swede, hauled his lightweight dinghy ashore and set off somewhere to look for his friend. We headed for the cliffs looming menacingly over the ocean on the side opposite Rano Raraku. The hike The road bends inland, but the barbed-wire fence goes on and on. We had no choice but to push straight through. After the incident with the rangers, Nastya is even more cautious, freezing beside the stiff bushes whenever someone drives along the road. In case the operation goes wrong, we have an agreement: at the word “Down!” everyone drops into the grass and plays dead. The route across the hillside is thorny and precipitous, but an hour later we are already walking towards the edge of the cliffs that plunge straight into the ocean. This is the very high coast we saw when approaching Easter Island from the ocean—the island’s eastern cape. From a distance it looks red and clayey, with little life. For some reason, this is where the soil erosion is at its worst—the erosion that turned the island into a semi-desert after the short-sighted ancients destroyed its forests. A shelterbelt of twisted eucalyptus trees protects the soil within it from destruction. Outside it, the ground lies stripped of turf, and every time it rains, red streams tumble into the Pacific Ocean. — Mum, let’s stop here! This is where my nest will be!—Ladunka found herself a cosy spot in a large tussock of grass and turned into a sooty tern—the very bird whose egg, some 500 years ago, a contender for the title of “Birdman of the Year” would seek out each spring. — And we’ll call Dad on the radio. And so we settled down for a picnic, graced by the divine spark of an internet signal that Nastya had managed to pick up right at the summit. By the end of the radio call, the captain turned out to be alive; the wind generator, not so much. The cap’n ordered us to return to the dinghy before dusk. We, meanwhile, tried to linger on the eucalyptus-covered summit for as long as possible. Well, we just love battling through the surf in the dark on our own, just us girls )). On the way down we played dead a couple of times, crossed a skeletal guava grove, drowned in the grass and fell off rocks, and only breathed easy once we were beyond the barbed wire. That incident at the Rano Raraku crater certainly left its mark on our hiking souls. And barbed wire is everywhere here, running alongside the roads. Just to take a walk through the grass, you have to cross it at least once. Surf at dusk We returned to the tiny fishing harbour after dark. The fishermen’s wives had waited for their husbands and driven home, leaving three dogs to guard the place. The dogs had nothing to do, and then we turned up. Not much of a job, perhaps, but still a job. And all three came running over, barking at a mother with two children—in other words, us. With the young sailor and the crew member, I edged sideways towards the rocks where the dinghy was secured by lines, untied them and climbed aboard directly from the rocks without moving over to the convenient quay. On our way out towards the surf line, our propeller snagged a submerged rope. While Nastya tried to free it, we were swung broadside to the waves. Engine off, start it again. Still caught. Engine off... start it... wait.... Free! Before we can straighten up completely, we are already bouncing towards the waves that have grown stronger by evening. — Bow into the waves, quick!—I scream at the top of my lungs.—Lada, get down on the floor! Nastya manages to swing the “tiller” over, and we leap onto a crest that is just beginning to foam, then, before we can plunge down, jump across to the next one. Boom! Boom! Smack! Smack.... My heart is in my boots. Smack. Smack!—Phew, we made it through. In the deepening darkness, we gallop towards the yacht and shout: — Russians, surrender! — Russians never surrender!—comes the reply from the deck, and the captain comes out to take our line. Home! And during the night, yet another yacht anchored nearby. A serious near-polar expedition, and our brother Slavs from Poland. To be continued!