7. Steve's Guest House in Easter Island
Chez Steve Residencia Kyle Mio
41,000 Chillean Pesos ($82) per night
3 night stay
We arrived at Easter Island a bit early, around noon. Steve, who is a frenchman that runs his own guesthouse on the island along with his native wife Ana, picked us up from the airport in his cool and beat-up truck. Most trucks on the island are pretty beat-up.
After a brief tour of the island, Steve showed us to our room, on his property. His property is on the outskirts of town, about a 4 minute drive or 25 minute walk from the airport. How cool is it that you can arrive here on a 767 wide-body, get off the jet-way, and walk to your destination. I can't think of any other places where I have done that!
He has 3 guesthouses next to his house, and a breakfast room attached to his house. As soon as we arrived, he sat us down with some pineapple juice and went over our plans for our 3 night stay. He got out a map, and suggested a hiking itinerary (which we did the next day), and a ATV/4x4 itinerary (which we did the following day). He suggested a spot to post up at sunrise on a remote part of the island, and even had a to-go breakfast waiting for us for our early departure to the sunrise spot. His English is decent, and definitely passable. He spoke a bit of Spanish. Mainly, I saw staying here as an opportunity to maintain my French, and that is the language we spoke most often and what he would revert to for complicated explanations.
Steve's truck, parked on his property
The entrance to two of the three guesthouses. Ours was the door on the right.
The walkway to Steve's breakfast nook, attached to his house
The house with small horse stables next door. The island had many feral horses roaming about.
Our room, with a double sized bed and a single sized bed. Also seen is the balcony and coffee/tea set-up in the corner
Clothes storage nook
View into the bathroom. The hot water was perpetual, and the shower refreshing after a day getting filthy on ATVs
The balcony was a peaceful place to retire for the night with a cold one or three
Breakfast each day was varied, and even made to-go if requested the day before.
I am trying not to put photos in these trip reports of things outside of the air/hotel accommodations, but I couldn't resist putting in this photo of the abandoned Moai quarry on Easter Island. What a beautiful and myserious place!
Overall, we found the guestroom very clean and comfortable. There was very spotty wi-fi, which the entire island shares. Steve and his wife did our laundry for 5,000 Chilean Pesos ($10). This was a great service to us since we are going to have to do laundry every 7-9 days on our Trip of a Million Lifetimes. There was no air conditioning, nor heat, but with Easter Island's climate, this was not needed. Each day the high was 68, low around 58, and some scattered showers here and there but generally sunshine.
After our 3 night sojourn, we were sad to say goodbye. Steve let us give him our packed luggage, while we walked into town to buy souvenirs. He then picked us up at the post office in town (where we got our Rapa Nui/Easter Island postage stamp) and took us to the airport for our return flight to Santiago.