Sunset on Easter Island
Easter Island is a magical place. Just getting there is an expensive chore, but once you’re there and surrounded by the vast Pacific Ocean there is a feeling of isolation sinks in. Sure, there’s cell service but it’s so slow you can’t share photos via text and many of the restaurants promote free WiFi, but you’re not going to binge on the latest Netflix show. Why waste time in your phone anyway? There’s so much to see like the sun setting behind a row of moai.
Just north of the city of Hanga Roa there is a park called Ahu Tahai which is the perfect place to experience the coolest sunset ever.
After we rented our car, checked into Hotel Atavai, and had lunch at Pea’s, we started exploring up the coast and found Ahu Tahai.
We were in the same time zone as Detroit but we’d been traveling for nearly two days and spent the last one on a plane. We were exhausted. The idea of staying up to watch the sunset was too much for all of us so we postponed sunset for a couple of days to get prepared.
Preparation meant beer, of course. We found a market which sold cold cuts like prosciutto and Corona so we prepped for a picnic in the park. Sunset was at 9:15 PM and we arrived at 8:30 with a number of other folks.
After setting up and cracking a few beers we were told by a park ranger that we were actually in a national park and that food and drinks were forbidden. Bummer.
The show was fantastic, nonetheless. I couldn’t stop taking photos because the sun dropping every few minutes changed everything.
A couple people saw my photos on my camera’s display and asked what my settings were. I manually set my white balance to “sun” (the one that looks like a sun), my ISO at 100 since I planned to shoot directly at the sun, and used aperture priority (on Canons it looks like Av) and set the f stop at 8.0. That lets the camera pick the appropriate shutter speed to match the other rest of the settings.
I also used my phone but the green dot from lens refraction is a little distracting.
Anyway, the sun setting below the horizon doesn’t instantly plunge the island in darkness.
That was so much fun! We went back to the hotel, finished our picnic, and woke up the next morning to go see the sunrise on the east coast.
~ Freddy
