RAPA NUI DAY THREE Part Three

Just to go back a step to Day Three Part 2. This is an aerial view of the crater where they do the Easter Island triathlon. It is such a good example of a collapsed volcano crater, I thought that I would put it in.








Also back up to the Navel of the World and associated moai.

This fallen moai is the biggest one ever known to have been erected.

It is also at Ahu Te Pito Kura, and named "Paro".

I have actually been selling you all short on moai stats.

Paro is 32.63 feet (9.80 meters) tall and weighs approximately 82 tons (74.39 metric tons).

Quite a bit more than the 30 tons I have been wobbling on about.




So to set the record straight:

* Total number of moai on Easter Island: 887
* Total number of moai that were successfully transported to their final ahu locations:
288 (32% of 887)

* Total number of moai still in the Rano Raraku quarry: 397 (45%)
* Total number of moai lying 'in transit' outside of the Rano Raraku quarry: 92 (10%)

* Largest moai:
Location: Rano Raraku Quarry, named "El Gigante"
Height: 71.93 feet, (21.60 meters)
Weight: approximately 145-165 tons (160-182 metric tons)

* Largest moai once erect:
Location: Ahu Te Pito Kura, Named "Paro"
Height: 32.63 feet (9.80 meters)
Weight: approximately 82 tons (74.39 metric tons)

* Largest moai fallen while being erected:
Location: Ahu Hanga Te Tenga
Height: 33.10 feet (9.94 meters)

* Smallest standing moai:
Location: Poike
Height: 3.76 feet (1.13 meters)

So there!

Last stop and last moai coming up at Anakena Beach.























Anakena beach is the only sandy beach on the island.

In the aerial view, the sea is the bluey greeny bit in the top left hand corner. The sand is the sand coloured bit. Green splodges are where the palm trees are. The thingy that looks like a broken banjo at the bottom of the shot, just above the writing, is an ahu with seven moai, well five and two halves moai really, as you will see. There is also another ahu sort of due up from the broken end of the banjo, only one moai but it seems to have two heads.

Just off the shot to the left is the Anakena Beach Commercial Centre. If you have been you know what I am talking about. I had two glasses of chilled chirimoya juice cos it was flipping hot and very nice they were too.





Anakena seems to have the whole of the island in essence. Sunshine, blue sea, golden sand, ahu, moai, palm trees etc.



Quite idyllic.








These are the 5 and 2 half moai but with four cracking top knots. ('Pukao'. Remember?)








Nice ahu.





Even a petroglyph or two
















Good Innit?










This is the smaller moai.














A bit Siamese Twinsy. No doubt there is a significance to this but I don't know what it is.

The other interesting thing about this moai is that it was erected by none other than Thor Heyerdahl of 'Kon Tiki' fame.

Probably not single handed. And with ropes, rollers and piles of stones and stuff.

He, apparently was desperate to put one up to prove his theory about how it was done.

You can see his point. Having just floated in from Peru on a balsa log raft to demonstrate his theory that the Rapa Nui people came from South America AND found the one ahu (the only one out of dozens) on the island resembling South American masonry, he must have been well chuffed so putting up a moai would have been the cherry on his cake.

So he pestered and pestered and eventually he was given permission to put up old two heads here.

I wonder if the elders thought

'Oh give him the deformed one to play with. It won't matter if he breaks it'.

But he didn't. And, fair play, he made a decent job of it.

Pity DNA testing has shown that the Rapa Nui came from Pacific Polynesia but it was still a hell of a float from Peru to Rapa Nui on an old bunch of logs.

'Chapeau' to Thor then.



Well, that's about it really for the old Rapa Nui Experience. I loved every minute of it from touching down to taking off again. And to cap it all, there was a beautiful sunset to eat my dinner in front of on my last night











Yes. It really did look like this!

RAPA NUI DAY THREE Part Two

Top billing goes to Dana.

With the Navel of the World.

I thought the nosey parkers and voyeurs amongst you would go straight to the navel anyway.

Good innit!

Thanks again for the day Dana. It was good craic. 'Craic' is Irish for good conversation, laughs and a jolly good time. That it was.


Another Important Announcement.

Noushka has produced a fine 7lb 4oz son at 0315 on Thursday, 10 May 2007. Called James.

What's this with the 'J's'. Jack, Joseph and James? What is that all about?

Nephew Robert and family will not read this. He put in a dodgy firewall round his computer and it has turned round and bit his ass. The house is now internet free. Even the signal that is paid for can't get in!

But I'm a great uncle again. Cool.

And Robert may get to go to Wembley after all.

Congrats all round.


Ahu Tongariki



Next stop, Ahu Tongariki. Arguably the most impressive ahu on the island.

Fifteen moai on a superb platform, near the quarry.




This shot was taken from the quarry by a Swedish whaling expedition in 1903. They were supposed to go to the Antarctic but they sort of diverted and never got past Rapa Nui and Tahiti.








Tough decision eh?

Ice, cold, dead whales to butcher, penguin stew every night with no tomato ketchup? Or balmy Polynesian islands and their fabled attractions?

Not exactly too close to call is it?


But, as is usual on Rapa Nui, the ahu has a bit of previous form.

It is built where it is, on the scale that it is because:

1. The ahu site is dead near the quarry at Rano Raraku, and it's all downhill to the coastal plain.

2. The coastal plain goes right down to the sea shore, easy for haulage.


So.

Just make a platform out of hundreds of tons of stones. Then carve fifteen, 20 to 30 ton, statues out of rock with stone tools. Sixteen if you count OddJob standing guard at the entrance.

Then, somehow, move statues down a mountain and across a coastal plain, no more than a mile or two and erect.

Oh, and then carve 32 eye sockets.


Deceptively simple instructions.

This is not your flat pack cupboard though.

This is your actual, big time, make it up as you go along mega-project. And nearly 900 of the things have been recorded already on the island. Lots still in the quarry, many fallen by the wayside, some even erected.

Can't help but be impressed, can you?

Our guide, Andrea, who is Rapa Nui, told us that there were several theories about how the moai were moved. Sleds, rollers etc. All wrong.

From their oral tradition, the Rapa Nui know the statues 'WALKED'!

The same way that you might 'walk' a freezer across the kitchen to get it in place i.e. rock it onto the back two corners and move one corner at a time. Into position.

It gets better. The bases of the moai, ex quarry, were sloped so the statue was taller at the back than at the front. So, by the time they had been walked into position on their back edges, these had worn away and the bases were more or less flat. Ready to erect with the minimum of base work. I wonder how many flat base, ex quarry, statues were 'walked' and the bases had to be re-carved flat before someone tumbled to that little trick.

Except, of course, it's not a titchy freezer and it's not 4 yards across your nice smooth tiled kitchen floor.

It's a soddin' great 30 ton lump of rock that has taken months to carve, ages to get down the mountain and ages to 'walk' to it's site. Maybe up to 12 kilometers. Across boulder strewn, rubbly, rough ground. THEN, you have to put it on a platform. And if, at any stage, you drop it, it will break and you will have to start again.

I would have plumped for fishing or gathering reed I think. Moai making sounds like it would play merry hell with your hands!




OK, so you have got your moai safely on their platform, and assuming nobody pushes them over for spite, there they are for all eternity or until the salty air erodes them away.

Wrong again.

Think tsunami!

One came in 1960 and blindly conquered, sweeping Tongarikan moai inland for several hundred metres.


This guy landed on his back in such a position as to allow this photo to be taken with his quarry birthplace as background. Now, that is some tsunami.


Happily, in 1992, help was at hand.

In 1992 a team from Japan brought in cranes and other heavy equipment. Their mission: restore Ahu Tongariki. Working under the direction of Chilean archaeologist, Claudio Cristino the task took five years.

So now we can see Ahu Tongariki in all its glory and well impressive it is too.



OK, that's the travelogue, here are the pix, for no other reason than I like them.

Slightly less impressive photo, due to presence of tall portly man with, apparently, no hair.

Pic: Dana Graphics again.

At this juncture, I did have my doubts about using Dana Graphics for pix of me..

After taking several successful photos of me at the quarry, Dana started taking phantom photos, so this shot was eventually taken after much walking about, pointing at camera buttons and giggling.



Eyes Front!













And spot the birdie


















From the back.

This was actually one of the last shots I took at this ahu.

All the rest of the party had settled for less than 500 pictures and made their way to the bus.

Not wishing to get on the wrong side of Andrea (you wouldn't, believe me), I suggested to happy snapping Dana that we might make our way back to the bus.

'Oh, it'll be OK' she said.

'I can walk faster than you so you'll be last and it'll be all your fault'

Bitch!




From the back but a bit nearer.













Tight crop






In All Its Glory. Pretty good platform too.



The Navel of the World


The oldest known traditional name of Rapa Nui is Te Pito o Te Henua. This means ' The Navel of the World'.

Some idea of your own importance I should say. Maybe warranted. When your nearest neighbour is Pitcairn Island, 1000 kilometres away, you ain't going to get much passing trade are you?

So it must have been like the Planet Cricket in ' The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy '. I think it was Planet Cricket. As their planet was permanently cloud covered, they thought they were the only people in anywhere. Not that they knew where 'anywhere' was, cos they thought they were the only ones anywhere, anytime, anyhow. One day a spaceship fell through the cloud and crashed.

What a surprise that was for the Cricketers.

Must have been a bit like that on Rapa Nui at times.

So on to Te Pito Kura.

The navel


The navel is the big round stone in the middle of the rock circle. It is very tactile and slightly magnetic. On a nice hot day it is also comfortingly warm to the touch.

Around it are four smaller navels for you to sit on, warm your bottom and so, if you wish, lay hands on the Big Navel.

Hence the phrase

'Warm hands, warm heart'





Left to right.

Dana, one nice, anonymous Greek lady, the bottom half of the other nice, anonymous Greek lady, Andrea and a Japanese lady, in the pink eyeshade.

All soaking up the warmth from the stones.









Me pointing out the bleedin' obvious to Dana. Who is mugging at the camera instead of paying attention.

This pose was a bit of a poke at the media who make people do daft things like pointing at a whacking great rock for the photo.

Good view of mini-navels here. Bit too low for me to be comfortable though.

OK for Dana. She is only 4 feet 7 inches tall. (Not really)



Don't you think that I have been very restrained with the warm bottom jokes?

Cos this is a family show.

More soon. Sorry about the false alarm e mail. Must have been button happy.

Additions and Errata

1. The photos of Ahu Tongariki at sunset and and the tsunamied moai with the quarry weren't mine. If they are yours, I hope you don't mind me using them. They were too good to leave out.

2 I invented the bit about the Swedish whaler photo. They were Norwegians. With PhotoShop.

RAPA NUI DAY THREE: Part One

Well, hello again, back on the blog after sorting out some (more) photo issues with Blogspot. All seems to be well now.

At the height of my frustration when buried in yards of code instead of pictures, I did think

'This is a hell of a way to enjoy yourself!'

Anyway, Day Three was the BIGGIE.

This is Part One (Oh my Gawd, how many parts to this?)

All day excursion with lunch, finishing with a dip in the Pacific if you had your cozzie. A lot to report so I have split it into three or I may just be blogged out before I finish it.

So, here goes.




First stop was the exotically named 'Bay That Is Good for Cleaning Fish'.

OK, so I forgot the real name because I forgot to take a pic of the label at the gate.

Anyway I have an excuse.

On the way across the field to the first site, an attractive, young, American blonde said to me:

"Hi, I'm Dana"

Well, I thought, not the best chat up line I have ever heard.

But, as it was almost certainly the only one I was likely to get all day (and probably the day after that!), it worked with me and Dana and me spent some of the day together which was great.

Sometimes also separately or together with two Greek ladies whose names I have disgracefully forgotten but who were fun to be around.

Dana will appear later with me and a navel.

(Oh please! Grow up at the back there. I thought that you were past all the body part jokes now, Nephew Matthew. You are 35 for Gods sake))

But back to Cleaning Fish.

It's good for cleaning fish because it has a shoreline that isn't a sheer cliff, hundreds of feet high, it's sheltered and there are no sharks. Well, not many. And they are only small.

Smallish.

And don't snigger. If you have to clean your own fish, these things are important.


There were also moai and pukao all over, all the moai horizontal. This is one of a few.

Apparently if someone annoyed you, another family or tribe for example, and you got mad enough, you pushed their moai down.

( 'You can't talk to me like that! I'll have your moai over if you don't watch your step'.)

Usually associated with a fair bit of argy bargy and no little bloodshed I expect.

Then they burned and pillaged your stuff and pushed your moai down.

Which accounts for all the pushed down moai all over the island.


For a change, this poor bloke never made it to the vertical.

Attempts were made, hence the pile of stones but to no avail.

How do we know it was never erected?

Answer at the end, if I remember to put it in.

And pay attention in future.




Ranu Raraku

Next was, for me, the toppest site of all. All the sites were good but this was the best.

Ranu Raraku is the quarry where the moai were carved. Miles from the coast where they are to be erected of course, no point if it is too easy eh?

OK, you have seen the buried statues and the half carved ones still in the quarry on TV.

Forget it.

When you are slogging up a mountain towards the sticking out heads, in 30 degree heat, to see something that you never dreamed of actually seeing in your lifetime, then it was a hell of a buzz for me


It still gives me a whizz just looking at the photos and writing about it.

The moai were carved out of rock called volcanic tuff. Except that it ain't so tuff and can be carved with a tool made from harder stone. As tuff is not so hard, erosion is a big problem and some of the moai are well worn away.

Erosion is also the reason there are only heads sticking up. The hill is essentially making its' way to the sea and burying moai as it goes.

I make no apology for all the photos. It is such a stunning site and sight; I still can't quite believe that I have been there.

So settle down and enjoy.


This guy probably came off best. Left to rest in peace for eternity.

He is huge. It's a pity there is no scale. As a guide though, I would maybe come up to the tip of his nose!




These guys made it out of the quarry.

They will look out to sea for ever or until erosion catches up with them.















Lonely Moai?

Moai looking out over the Shropshire Hills?


























Leaning moai with Andrea (our guide) for scale.

Lovely she was but no small cookie.
Leaning moai with me for scale.

Good job my head wasn't any higher else my hair would have disappeared!

(Photo by Dana Graphic)


Moai in repose















After the moai extravaganza, Andrea said 'This way' and headed off up (and I mean up) a path previously only used by goats and people with oxygen and crampons.

I knew this was going to be a serious day as Andrea turned up in trainers. Usually she wore flip flops!

After much scrambling and mild panic on my part about having, sooner or later, to go down again, we reached the usual water filled volcanic crater.

This one was for fun though.

Once a year, the young bucks put on paint and paddle across the lake on reed boats.

They then pick up bunches of bananas on poles and, possibly still carrying the reed boats, run round the crater and up the hill.


Then they pick up big bunches of more reed (and the reed boats and bunches of bananas?) to carry down to the lake before a final swim across. With or without their multiple bunches of reeds and bananas was not made clear.

By way of a change from swimming and running about, with or without reed boats, bunches of bananas on sticks and more reeds, the young bucks could take part in a 'Haka Pei"

This means you get to slide down steep grassy hills on banana leaf sleds at high speed. All going 'Wheeeeeeeee' probably.

Bit like Carding Mill Valley in Shropshire only there you use plastic fertiliser sacks instead of banana leaves.

And not many people get painted up.


And so to lunch. With my new good buddy, Dana.

Due to her idiosyncratic approach to travel and Easter Island trips in particular, Dana had managed to get herself on a 'lunch included' tour with a 'packed lunch'.

Of course, not having the 'included' lunch, she was banished to the outlying 'packed lunch, too mean to pay for the included lunch' table, on her own, with ants for company.

Well, of course, I did the chivalrous thing.

Reckoning that I would be better company than ants (it was close), I had my paid for, 'included lunch', with her and her, 'economy class, packed' lunch at her outlying, ant-ridden, table.

OK, just my little joke.

Dana is an elegant, attractive, blonde, engaging, friendly and intelligent lady from Colorado, currently working in TV in NYC. Good company she is. Lunch was a treat for me, except for the ants, which weren't actually very good company.

Thanks for that Dana.

Danas' Mom had a milestone birthday last week and Dana had a week in Colorado on vacation.

Hope the birthday party was a gas and hope you have many more Danas' Mom.

I suppose you just couldn't make Saturday night.

Request for Noushka. Can you produce before the Wembley Final or well after it? It's only a baby after all. You can have babies anytime, this might be Morecambes only chance at promotion. Think of Uncle Matthew rather than self, self, self. Aim for before the 20th or after it. Good luck and luv whenever.

More soon. With Danas' navel.

Brace Yourselves!

And, by the way, blog writing is a hell of a way to enjoy yourself. This brings lots of things, otherwise forgotten, back to me. And some people seem closer than they might other wise be.

OK it's sentimental old me.

Blame the bottle of Chablis!

Luv To All

BJIC

RAPA NUI DAY TWO: Part Two

Last stop on Day Two was at a place called Tahai.


By the sea, as you can see, and it is a group of five moai, on an ahu, and two lone moai.

Also there is a fallen down moai and a boat house base.


This is our guide, Andrea, by the boat house.


Tradition has it that, when the two canoes, each bearing a thousand people from Hiva, landed, they turned the boats over for shelter. The form was continued and it is actually not a bad design for a fairly temporary house.

The foundation stones are laid, the boat ribs and keel pole are erected and lashed into place and the whole lot covered in reeds, grasses and banaba leaves which actually makes it quite weatherproof. (Note: Banaba leaves are leaves from the banaba plant that grow well on Rapa Bui.) Add a patio out front and you have a fair old beach house.



Behind Andrea you can just make out a fallen moai, broken in three. They always break in three apparently.

This one though was being nicked by some locals for an overseas collector who wanted it as a water feature or something back home. How he was going to get it home is anybodies guess. Hand luggage rules are pretty flexible but, come on!
Anyway the locals messed up and broke it, were caught moai handed so were roundly punished. One of them though was a stone mason and he made some eyes for an adjacent moai to show his repentance.


Scary stuff ain't it.

I did mess with the colour a bit though.

The eyes are quite interesting, Usually the whites are made of coral and the pupils of obsidian, which is a volcanic glass.

One way of telling if a fallen moai was ever erected, as opposed to the erectors being clobbered or having an attack of the 'sod its' before they got it into position, is the eye sockets.

The sockets were always carved after the moai was erected.

So, no sockets, it has never been erected and vice versa.

There is some debate as to whether or not the eyes were in place all the time or just popped in for special occasions. Can't see how that can be resolved really

What is for sure is that very few eyes survive or have been found on the island. This could be because not many moai actually had eyes or, possibly because coral, apparently, burns very well so the coral whites could just have gone up the chimney.


The group of five moai (well, four and a half really. The one on the left end is a bit of a titch) is really just a group of five moai. I don't remember anything special being said about them,







They do look a bit spookier courtesy of iPhoto though.












The two odd bods, one with eyes and one without, again, apart from the story about the repentant stone mason, were also unremarkable.








In so far as 15 metre high, 20 ton plus, blocks of stone, carved with stone tools little harder than the stone being carved, transported God knows how for 20 kilometers and popped in place by the sea, with eyes and top knots can ever be unremarkable.








So that was Day Two.

Day Three to follow if you have the stamina.

Kevin has put loads of wedding pics on The Cheese Empanada blog, link somewhere on this page, if you want a change from moai.

BJ

OOPS

Sorry Folks

Two Posts about Easter Island have popped up in a time line associated with when I started to write them NOT when I when I published them.

So I am afraid that you all will have to go to the posts of the 11th and 13th March 2007 to find out about my trip to Easter Island.

I will try and re date subsequent posts so they read sequentially.

But Blogspot may win!

BJ

KIDS

As those of you who have been paying attention will know, there have been a number of assorted children making appearances in this blog.

I thought it would be nice to give them a page of their own 'cos they were all smashing and it's easy to overlook them in the weddings melee. (Actually it is not so easy to overlook Pipi as our relationship was, primarily, him hitting me)

So here goes

BEN

Ben is the son of Sian, who Kevin has known since he first came to Chile, and her partner Christian who I found to be a proper gent.

Sian is Welsh but, hey, somebody has to be.

The one with the hat is me. The hat is because I was wind burnt the day before the church wedding. The shades are because it was sunny and 'cos they look dead cool with the hat.

Pity I look more like Jungle Jim than Brad Pitt.



This is Sian who is a lovely person, if a bit on the small side. I mean she is petite not one of the Seven Dwarves.

Christian, well, heaven knows what he was up to. He isn't in any of my 1656 photos so seems to have been keeping out of the way.

Perhaps he is on the run again.

Anyway if either of you are reading this, a nice pic of the three of you would be great to complete my collection.








Benji with Vilma who seemed to adopt him for a while.

Ben is in his 'Magnificent Seven' costume. Ben will shortly successfully protect the Mexican villagers from bandits and ride to the Swiss border on a stolen German motor bike to escape and be foiled by the frontier defences.

Or maybe I have my films mixed up.













RICARDO & DAUGHTER

To my shame, I have forgotten his daughters name. Sorry.

Look closely at the guy pointing. Attached to his left leg is his daughter who, at this point, wouldn't be separated from him











Some Time Later

Here she is getting stuck in in the pool and taking few prisoners

















Whirling with her Dad.

(Send me your e mail address and I will let you have the video)













And generally larrikin about.



The antidote for shyness seems to be a tummy full of food and a pool!

Later on she appeared to pull a boy but modesty forbids me to go into details.










VALENTINA



Valentina, called Vale for short is Vilmas daughter.

Lovely child who seems to have her Mums good humour and graceful good looks.

Excepting when Vilma was wearing 'those shoes' on the non Stag night. Not exactly graceful then eh love?






Vale getting into the spirit of things.

Just pop of course.

I think









Mother and Daughter.

Nice smiles all round.

In the background on the right is Karen, a friend of Marias from work. Her birthday is 1 April, April Fools Day I told her.

Not in Chile it seems. They have November Fools Day there.









This is Vale in the dress she wore to the wedding. She was the only child not to go in the pool.

Apparently, she loved the dress so much, she wouldn't take it off to put her swimming kit on!

Vale also loves taking photos. After she had exhausted most of the disposable cameras put on each table, I sent her off round the tables with my camera to take pictures for me.

And pretty good they were too. It seems a lovely young girl with a big smile can get better reactions from the subject than a white haired old git.

Funny that!





TOMAS


Tomas is the son of Carola, Marias sister, and Ricardo.

He likes Sponge Bob Square Pants and playing on the computer.

He finishes school at lunchtime, comes home, shakes hands, says "Hello" in English, if he wants to, and then seems to disappear to the computer.

Likes playing with balloons. Kevin had balloons at his non Stag night and they went down a treat with the younger guests.






FELIPE

Felipe is Carola and Ricardos youngest son. Known as Pipi. Seen here with his Mum who is smiling mainly due to the large pisco sour she is holding I suspect.

I asked Kevin what Pipi liked to do so I could get a present for him. Kevin said he fell over a lot. Not a great deal of help really.

Pipi just frowned at me to begin with. Then, as he got used to me, he hit me a lot. His latest habit is biting people. Fortunately I didn't get to know him that well!


FRANCISCO

Francisco usually called Pancho, the eldest of the trio. Carola is his Mum but he has his own Dad.

Pancho is big on transport. Cars, buses, aeroplanes, helicopters etc. I took him a model of a London bus. He was studying it intently for a while. Looking for the emergency exit would you believe. Now that's what I call a serious interest.





CAROLA AND RICARDO

Not strictly children but nice people who deserve a mention.

Carola works for LAN, the national airline. Apparently she knows what really goes into corn flakes from the cargo that comes into Chile.

Ricardo has his own company, pours a mean glass of champagne and is an all round good guy.






Felipe waiting to be let out to hit me some more.














ALFONSO


The baby of the family and son of Marias other sister, Alejandra, called Channy, and her husband, Pablo.

I would love to be able to say that Alfonso was called 'The Fonz". But he isn't.

Smiley and happy, Alfonso is everybodys friend. He loves being carried around. Channy must have arms of steel.










Me doing my carrying Alfonso turn. It was good fun actually. We bonded by sharing an empanada. Then my arm muscles were throbbing a bit so I gave him to Kevin!















Family shot.

Channy, Pablo and Alfonso.

Pablo has a new camera and took lots of shots with it. I saw some shots he had taken whilst in the States and the detail was amazing.

A disc with your wedding shots on it would be very much appreciated Pablo. You seemed to get places where I didn't so you should have some good ones. Particularly the ones where Channy was doing her 'Titanic' pose!




Alfonso is so popular he sometimes disguises himself to try and get some peace and quiet.

Pity he picked Elvis as his disguise of choice.

Not sure that would go unnoticed down the mall on a Saturday.

And the bib is a bit of a giveaway.









LAST BUT NOT LEAST, SALVADOR


Son of Helen, who was Kevins line boss when he first came to Chile, and Claudio.

I met Salvador before when he and Helen visited about 18 months ago so it was great to see how he had grown.







He does like a drink.

Mind you, so does his Mum and Dad!

Or so I am told.





The way to Salvadors heart is via ice cream. This disappears from his bowl faster than you can spoon it in.













Nice family group.

Helen and Claudio are on the champers.

Salvador may be on Mogadon as he doesn't like going to sleep!










DO NOT LET THIS FOOL YOU!

He is probably good for quite a few hours yet

Unless it really was Mogadon
















So that's the kids.
If that bored you wait til I start on the 60+ guests (No. Not the ones over 60, smarty pants)

And the moai!


Bye For Now

BJ