One of the things I love most about Chile is its obscurity. I've had many discussions with highly educated people who are completely at a loss for identifying it on a map of the world. This seems very odd to me, but it also adds to its allure. Chile is very inconveniently located, and so very few people outside of South America have reason to visit it. This means that it is very unlikely that you will run into another gringo, or be spoken to in English simply because you look gringo-ish.
Like I said, I love it.
And perhaps a lesser known fact is that Chile's territory extends beyond the coast of the South American continent to encombass Easter Island - a small, sparsely populated Polynesian island located a whopping 3,510 km (2,180 mi) west of continental Chile at its nearest point; about the same distance from NY to LA.
Needless to say, that's far. And unfortunately, a trip to Easter Island just wasn't in the cards for this particular trip to Chile. Maybe next time.
However, as a consolation prize for Chilean visitors who lack the time and money to make the 2,000 mile trek to the actual island, there is a very nice Museum located in Viña del Mar. So after stuffing our faces with seafood at Divino Pecado, we took a pleasant walk down the tree-lined streets to El Museo Fonk, the Easter Island museum named after the guy who bequeathed his collections to the government.
The museum is housed in a nicely refurbished mansion, and on this particular summer day, it was teeming with tourist who were busily snapping photos of the Easter Island statute in the front lawn of the museum.The exhibits, similar to the island itself, were fascinating. One display that particularly caught my eye was a display of shrunken heads. All of the descriptions were in Spanish and it remained unclear as to whether the displays were authentic, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they were. This is South America after all.
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