Easter Island

Easter Island – January 21

 

We had large swells and the Captain decided to use the alternate anchorage which put us in right at the town where we had landed in 2009. The announced that no disabled passenger should try to embark the tenders as the swells and waves were quite bad. It took about 45 minutes to load each tender as the sailors had to time each persons entry just right. We were on the third tender and it was about 1 and a half hours after our original tour start time – but who cares- we made it. We were in a 6 passenger van and headed off. Our first stop was at the group of Moai visible from the ship and we had been there before. I like it because it has a beautiful water background and I included the ship in a couple of the shots. This is also the only Moai that has its eyes in.

 

Ok … I'm walking around and shooting as I want to get as many pictures at each stop as possible when BAM – my ankle turns on a stone and I'm on the ground. Ouch (although I don't think that's what I actually said), I picked up my left leg and my foot is completely to the inside almost at a 45 degree angle. I looked at Jim and said "I broke it". I started to move it to see what would happen and popped it right back in place. That cut the pain way down so I said, "maybe not broken but I seem to be stuck here on the ground". By then several people had come over to help and one of them was a great young man from the shops here on the ship who immediately arranged for me to be transported back to the tender pier in a van. With my arms around his and Jim's shoulders we hobbled me to the van and then to a chair at the pier to wait for a tender – I felt like a football player being helped off the field. They made a bag of ice for me to put on it and gave me some lemonade and were super nice... all I could think was #@$%^^$#! this was probably the port I most wanted to go to!!

Getting me into the tender wasn't a problem but I knew getting me out would not be easy with the huge swells, but they managed; we got my right foot (the good one) up at the edge of the boat and then at the right time they sort of tossed me to the guys on the tender bay. Then two of the crew helped me up the long stairs into the ship with Jim carrying our cameras and bags. They had a wheelchair waiting. I had my choice of calling for emergency medical care and them paging the Dr and Nurses to the med center or waiting a couple hours until it reopened... since it wasn't really life threatening I decided to just go to the cabin and wait. It felt awfully good to lie down with a pillow tower and an ice pack for my foot. Jim pushed me in a wheelchair to the med center when it opened and after X-rays it isn't broken – just pretty badly sprained so I'm wrapped in an ace bandage with an ankle brace and spending my time on the bed with my foot on pillows and using ice. It sucks but it could have been worse.

Shortly after we got back to the ship, the Captain announced that they were canceling all remaining shore excursions and that no additional people would be tendered ashore so they could concentrate on getting the 800 people already there back to the ship. It really was rough! I felt bad for those people that couldn't go, but I'm thankful that I was able to get back early before the tenders were full of people returning and the swells and waves were even worse that when we went.

 

Here's my last shot before I fell.

 

Just as I'm writing this on Tuesday afternoon feeling extremely stupid for falling in the first place, there was a knock on the door and a steward brought me a plate of candies from the front desk 'hoping I'm feeling better'.  What a thoughtful thing to do.  Yummy too! I'll send them a thank you note in a few minutes.  I want to get this posted while it seems that we have a good connection – my earlier post went right through.