Continued from Part III

. . . the Tropic of Capricorn, and celebrated Christmas at sea. It was an unusual experience and, to be honest, we missed the snow—although it turns out, Toronto and environs were green for the holidays—and found it a little hard to catch the Christmas spirit despite the effort made by crew to decorate the ship with trees, gingerbread houses and lights. in addition holiday tunes and carols were piped over the loudspeakers ad infinitum. Still, the spirit was hard to come by. We thought Christmas Eve mass would at least put us in the mood. Alas, it turned out to be an unusual Christmas Eve mass. Touted as ecumenical, the celebrant, turned it into a sober lecture after which he dismissed non-Catholics without communion. He then held mass for Roman Catholics passengers and crew. So much for the Christmas spirit or an ecumenical one.

After leaving Pitcairn, the next leg of this sea journey took two-and-a-half days, often on choppy seas accompanied by gusting winds. The wind at times made it difficult to keep to one's schedule of a daily run around the ship's track. Still, we covered a distance of 2075 km in good shape until we reached Easter Island (Rapa Nui in local language). This is the most easterly and southerly located island of Polynesia. It is by far the loneliest single island on Earth, while the island chain of Hawaii is the loneliest group of islands in the world, and Polynesia's most northerly.

Easter Island, a Chilean possession since 1888, offers some of the most unusual sights imaginable. Almost bare of trees common to the Pacific, it reveals small copses of leafy trees, rolling green hills and fields, surrounded by low stone walls that reminded me of England's Yorkshire, not Polynesia. Since it served for decades as a sheep farm for a huge Chilean/British concern, the similarity to Yorkshire is understandable. Almost unfathomable is the island's distance from mainland Chile, another 3,510 km. There are no other islands anywhere near it in any direction of the compass. One really began to feel just how vast the Pacific ocean is. Another thing that underlined the huge expanse of this ocean is that we saw no other ships on the horizon anywhere, nor birds skimming over the water unless we came close to some kind of land. Only once did we see some whales, which was a thrill to observe, and a few times, some playful schools of porpoises.

Of course, we had undertaken this long journey to come to see what really makes Easter Island famous, the unusual Moai stone statues that stand on stone platforms called Ahu. The tallest Moai reaches 15 feet and weighs 20 tons. At one time they stood around the entire island, generally facing inward. But just what or who toppled most of the more than 800 statues by the time Europeans came along is not clear. Just as mysterious is their meaning and how, for one, the natives lifted huge round 'hats' onto these statues.

The history of the Rapa Nui natives is involved and murky. By the time the Dutch discovered the island in the 1700s, the local culture was in decline, few native trees, especially its huge palms, remained, and the population appeared to be in rapid decline. It is certain, however, that in the 19^th century, the number of remaining islanders was decimated by Peru's slave trade. Today's population of about 4,000 is almost 60% native. These are all descendants of 36 reproductive natives left after the final slave raid in the 1860s, which left only 111 locals on what is now called Rapa Nui (Big Rapa) by the locals and Isla de Pascua (i.e. Easter Island, because its Dutch discoverer landed there on Easter 1722). The remaining 40% are of mixed European-Chilean background and native South Americans.

A well-informed guide took us over often rough paths to see the 7^th century statues, and remnants of ancient low, stone houses and walls. The stones of these had all been perfectly hewn and fitted without metal tools. We also visited the crater of a long-extinct volcano and looked at what the locals called 'bird island', rocks offshore to which natives used to swim in the past to collect bird eggs. The winner in this strange contest was the man of the hour for a year, so to speak. The precision of the cuts and the fitting of the stone walls on Easter Island tempts one to compare them to the exacting masonry of the Incas (or in my case, to even more ancient ruins, that of the 7,000 year old temple walls on Malta, the oldest found in the world), but so far no connection to the Inca culture has been found. Fortunately, much of Easter Island is now a UNESCO World Heritage site and there is hope that this will lead to more preservation and also to more archeological digs on the island. An effort is now being made to re-introduce the native palm tree, a very slow-growing species that can only be found in Peru.

The time on Easter Island was far too short, but we had to return to the ship to continue our journey. The singularly calm landscape and the ancient culture are a lure for perhaps a future visit. The island has an airport and planes fly in from Chilean airports. After four full days, under cloudy skies and continued choppy seas we reached San Martin in Peru. The night before sailing into San Martin harbor we celebrated New Year's at sea. It turned into an enjoyable experience, filled with just as much noise and bubbly spirits as one would have had on land. Celebrating the arrival of a new year at sea seemed a most natural thing to do.

In San Martin some of our fellow passengers left for a flight to Cusco, Peru's ancient capital, to start the journey to Machu Picchu, the famous mountaintop Inca ruins. Others flew off to the Galapagos Islands. From San Martin we journeyed by bus to Tambo Colorado, an Inca fortress in the Pisco Valley. To our amazement the coastline of Peru turned out to be a desert through which run a few rivers fed by the melting waters of the Andes. The area had been hit by an earth quake in 2007 and signs of it are still visible in the villages along the route. Some of the villages had been totally destroyed and their now skeletal centuries-old adobe churches reach empty and sad into the sky. Many of the villagers have ended up living in pueblos jóvenes (shantytowns) on the outskirts of the larger cities along the coast. While we saw some rebuilding taking place, the efforts appeared minuscule in comparison to the damage caused by the quake and the time that has elapsed since it happened. The quake made a small part of Tambo Colorado inaccessible and its walls showed many cracks from it. There was no danger to us, however, and the site is impressive to see and worth the 90-minute drive along the well-maintained Pan-American highway.

In the not-so-far distance we saw the Andes. Where they face the Pacific side of Peru, edged by the desert, they are brown in color, very unlike the green lushness one usually sees on photographs of this huge mountain range. As we learned, the clouds coming in from the Pacific pass over the mountains and discharge their rain on the inland-side where it creates the country's lush rainforests.

On the way between San Martin and Tambo Colorado stands an elegant monument in the desert that intentionally looks like a sailing ship. It is dedicated to General José Francisco de San Martín Matorras. Its inscription proclaims that San Martin liberated Argentina, Chile and Peru from the colonial rule of Spain. San Martin's army, as we learned from the monument's inscription, arrived in the Bay of Paracas on September 8, 1820. The Paracas Peninsula is located within the Paracas District of Peru's Pisco Province.

After leaving San Martin the Pacific Princess sailed north . . . .