I missed a solar eclipse on Easter Island

Apparently there was a total eclipse Sunday that was only visible across large swaths of the uninhabitated Spouth Pacific (yahoo coverage). It was visible for Chile, and Tahiti and Easter Island. I have been to Easter Island! Given how tiny that island is it is a surprise that an eclipse would catch it, though I suppose almost everywhere on the globe has them sometime.

With the baby and the expense and so many other places to travel to we wouldn't have gone back to see it, but a solar eclipse and Moai in the same shot would have been awesome.

Telegraph.uk has the pictures.

I am holding out for the United States eclipses of August 21st 2017, and April 8th 2024. They will be close together and there is a spot in Southern Illinois near Kentucky including Carbondale, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and Paducah, Kentucky which will experience both solar eclipses, two in seven years.

(sketch via Dan Falk at flickr, another hot off the presses flickr photo)

The best view I ever had from a toilet

The Mail online ran an article on the toilets with the best views in the world. Many are on the peaks of mountains or the edge of beautiful ocean vistas. Most would be worth visiting.

It reminded me of one outdoor toilet on Easter Island. It was at the ranch where we stayed the night during our horseback riding trip around the entire island. This ranch was within walking distance of Terevaka which contains Rana Raraku, the volcanic crater and quarry where the special stone for the moai (the stone heads) comes from. You could see the volcano dotted with moai that never made it to there final locations. Unfortunately some of these pictures were only taken with the old crappy Treo camera, so they'll never be in a glossy magazine.


The Toilet


The View.


The Moai on the volcano closeup.




Mostly carved but unfinished moai in the quarry itself.




The view of camp and the toilet from the volcano. The toilet is next to the red house. Click on the picture for larger.

Are there plans to land the Space Shuttle on Easter Island?

I just finished reading the book Shuttle Down by Lee Correy. This 1981 story of an emergency landing of the Space Shuttle on Easter Island definitely has many of my favorite things all wrapped up into one.

It has the Space Shuttle, an exciting emergency landing, Easter Island (or Isla de Pascua or Rapa Nui or Te Pito O Te Henua), heroes that are engineers and finally a little Cold War intrigue.

When we were on Easter Island we learned that the Mataveri International airport runway had been widened and the airport modernized by the United States for NASA as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle. This was in November of last year and there wasn't a Shuttle mission until December. How cool would it have been to see the Shuttle land on Easter island? While there are emergency landing sites all over the world, one is in Dover, Delaware. If that ever happened I would be in my car driving south to see it as soon as I could.

The book takes place long before the airport on Easter Island was prepared to take a Space Shuttle landing and the story revolves around getting the airport upgraded to allow NASA to get the Shuttle off of the island and one of the true heroes of the book is Red Richardson the NASA engineer who is in charge of getting it done. The book is credited with getting the NASA emergency procedures changed to take into account these situations and may be responsible for getting Easter Island its long runway, which allowed us to honeymoon there in the first place. Thank you, Lee Correy.

In great Cold War tradition the Russians even try to make a grab for the Space Shuttle. Do you remember the Cold War, when there was a right side and a wrong side? Even the CIA's release of the "family jewels", the embarrassing illegal activities from the height of the Cold War 50's, 60's and 70's, makes some folks think that the Cold War was the good old days compared to today's international situation. Those parts of the book were a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

While the book seemed to portray Easter Island fairly authentically the one critical mistake is that it repeatedly described the Moai as pointing out to sea and watching over the part of the world towards which they faced. Any Moai standing on Easter Island that are not in the quarry are restored, since every statue was knocked down during the wars on the island and when they were standing or when they were restored they faced inland, not out to sea. Our guide on the island pointed out that the Rapa Nui people believed the Moai concentrated the mana of their ancestors and watched over the part of the island they faced.

Jack Chick parody staring Tiki vs. Moai

Humuhumu posts a clever Jack Chick parody tract about the dangers of the Tiki. I am a fan of Jack Chick parody (the cthulhu version is discussed here). I was struck by the similarity of some of the poses of the tikis and some photos I took while we were on Easter Island.

vs.

It's almost as if they were there. I should point out that, technically, the statues on Easter Island are called Moai.

More disturbing is that the tract warns against the dangers of delicious tropical drinks. While we were on Easter Island and also in Chile we learned about a liquor made from grapes called pisco. Pisco is really good in the traditional Chilean drink called a pisco sour. (I am sure some Peruvians will claim it is their drink, but we should all have one and get along). I spite of the dangers to my soul (maybe if it is a sour that will save me) I will relate a good recipe that has worked for us.

Pisco Sour
1.5 parts sugar
2 parts lemon juice
3 parts pisco
shake with ice and pour into a champagne glass.

You need more sugar than any recipe will tell you on the bottle. It is very tasty.

(The pictures of the Tiki Jack Chick parody are nicely scanned in here.)

tags: Easter Island, Rapa Nui, Te Pito O Te Henua,