I went to a traditional dinner and show and it turns out that they traditionally cooked like the maoris do in New Zealand by steaming food in a pit (see my blog entry when my family did a hangi).

I had been looking forward to coming to Easter Island because I thought it being a Polynesian island it would remind me of home but this is the first time that it has.

There isn’t really much to do on Easter Island when you can’t dive, snorkel, hire a car to drive or bicycle around so I decided to have a reki session with Diana. I was a little bit skeptical but actually I felt much better afterwards.

Then in the afternoon we went to the place that the islanders used to have the birdman competition and swim to an island and the first one back with an egg tribe became chief.

I was lucky enough to find Diana to couch surf with as accommodation is pretty expensive on Easter Island. Diana is a Swiss girl who had been studying alternative therapies while working at a bank and then gave it all up to come and become a healing practitioner on Easter Island. I have a lot of respect for people who make dramatic changes to their lives and she is particularly lovely. Also that night another person who couch surfs invited us to a bbq at his place.

I met a Swiss nurse who said that collarbone breaks are usually fixed by wearing something that pulls your shoulders back and that if you don’t fix it right away it knits wrongly. So now I am worried that I have to have surgery if it isn’t too late already and whether I will be able to get it done before I start my new job. And I might always have a droopy shoulder.

As well as transporting these 120 tonne statues all over the island a lot of them are wearing these red stones as top hats that weigh several tonne. The next night we went to a Rapa Nui dance show.

Easter Island is the worlds most isolated inhabited island – Chile is 3500kms to the east and Pitcairn Island is 2000kms to the west.

But what really makes it an enigma is that the Polynesian society that lived here almost drove themselves extinct due to the deforestation of the island including the giant palms that they used for ocean going canoes so they could no longer catch deep sea fish that had been an important part of their diet. Also the island is littered with moai which are giant heads weighing up to 120 tonnes which are all over the island and historians are still guessing how they transported them around their 24km by 12km wide island.

I was lucky enough to have a lovely Polish couple where I was staying allow me to hire a jeep with them and drive us around the island.

Since I was at school in NZ and one of my classmates was apparently in the movie Rapa Nui I have wanted to go to Easter Island and I was able to get a ticket with my airmiles for £30. It isn’t really the ideal time as I wanted to go diving and it isn’t likely with my broken collar bone and previously punctured lung but I am not going to pass up the chance to see my long time dream destination.

On my 5 hour flights from Santiago to Isla de Pascua (what the Spanish call Easter Island) I watched a movie about a guy whose wife died in a car accident. At the hostel there was a movie about a women who was paralysed from the neck down in an accident. It is freaking me out a little bit.

There is a city 100kms from Santiago called Valparaiso which is the cultural capital of Chile and has steep streets, elevators and lots of graffiti. When I mentioned to Roberto and Daniela that all the tours were booked they said that they would take me and Myles. Great day for us, but they were sad by the wrong person winning the governmental elections in Chile held today.

To celebrate getting the cast off I went for a drink next to the hostal and met someone who said that there was a couch surfing meet up just down the road so we went along. That evening I was told that I now have one shoulder lower than that other and that I drag my right leg (which is still a bit numb from the impact) so I was feeling a bit dejected until a cute Portuguese guy hit on me which cheered me up so much I burst into hysterical happy laugher which scared him away.

I just met a nurse and she said that because my collarbone wasn’t treated right to begin with I might always have a really droopy shoulder.

To tell you the truth I have been quite worried about how to get follow up care for my injuries which seem to be getting more and more painful. But luckily when I emailed a guy in Santiago who had enquired about buying my bike to say it had been in an accident. He emailed back asking whether he could help me and he is a physiotherapist at a general hospital. He ended referring me to a trauma specialist at a clinic who said that my broken collarbone hadn’t healed at all, cut off my cast (thank goodness) and recommended an arm immobiliser. It was such a relief to have a doctor look at my injuries. A huge thank you to Roberto for organising it for me!

I had thought that when I saw a doctor in Santiago and got the cast off I would feel better but I have less motion with the immobiliser and it turns out that all the pain was from my damaged ribs.

Roberto and his girlfriend Daniela showed me a bit of Santiago, bought me a local drink and gave me an insight into Chile’s capital city (including the women police ride scooters while men ride bikes). They are planning a round the world motorbike trip and are the type of people that would ace it.