This is an archive - these pages are no longer updated!
Some information will be out of date.  Some of this writing goes back to 1995.
See Tiki Road Trip (2007 edition) for the most up-to-date information.

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Kopakavana
Rapa Nui, Chile

What can I say about Kopakavana?  I was walking down the street in Hanga Roa, the only village on Easter Island, and I saw a restaurant with a big plaster Moai outside.  Normally, this would be cause for excitement, right?  Absolutely!  But in Hanga Roa, every business in town is decorated with Moai images, as well as other traditional Rapa Nui carvings and petroglyphs.  So seeing this Moai was no cause for any particular joy, except for the joy I was feeing all damned week because I was on Easter Island to start with. Of the dozen or so places one can get a meal in Hanga Roa, I have chosen to review Kopakavana.  In addition to the Moai outside, there are more Moai painted on the walls near the patio.  Bamboo and thatch are primiary construction elements.  The lights are low.  Kopakavana is also decorated with fishing floats and shell lampshades, and there is a high arched roof, all of which create the sort of atmoshpre that the North Amreican Tiki Bars have been trying to copy for fifty years. Pisco Sour is the drink of choice, and local music by favorites Matatu'o can be heard ubiquitously on the CD player.  Owner Jorge Tucki also owns a carving studio across the street. If you ever make it to Rapa Nui, have a look at Kopakavana.  Although rather nondescript compared to many of the wonderfully overdone behemoths here in the US, places like Kopakavana are where Trader Vic and Don The Beachcomber got the idea in the first place.  This isn't any hipster bar from the fifties - this is the real thing.

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