180° South Page #2

in 3 and a half hours.

Even great climbers can take days.

Keith quit the Pro Surf Tour

about 6 years ago,

and since then, he has devoted himself to discovering

new surf spots around the world.

He has been chased by grizzlies in Canada

and shot out by rebels in the Spice Islands.

He's a man of few words,

but if there's any surf down there,

this guy will find it.

We thought a good warm up for Keith would be

the North American wall on "El Capitan".

Yvon made the first ascent of this route

back in 1964,

when it's considered

the most difficult rock climb in the world.

It's still no cake-walk,

which was interesting

because Keith hadn't climbed much at all,

not to mention, the guy is afraid of heights !

We felt like climbing had no worth to society what so ever,

we didn't want to be part of the military industrial complex.

Life was pretty easy in the 1960s,

I mean, you could buy an automobile for 15 bucks

and live out of your automobile

and camp out in Yosemite

and then, here were these great walls,

that hadn't been climbed,

that were as big and as smooth and as difficult

as any walls in the world.

The biggest one of all was the North American wall

on "El Capitan".

My friends Chuck Pratt,

Royal Robbins, Tom Frost and I,

we made the first ascent

over a period of 10 days.

The wall overhangs the entire way,

and it's questionable whether you could ever get down

if you got half way up and couldn't go any further.

It's very similar to the first guys to ride

really big waves like at Waimea,

they didn't know whether they could get held down

by one of these big waves

to where they'd just die.

The fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all,

but we just went for it.

Keith and Timmy couldn't make the long Pacific crossing,

but hopefully, they'll be meeting me down in Patagonia.

I have the sunrise watch every morning.

It has taken me a month to get into the mindset

of long distance sailing.

As each day passes,

I feel more detached

from my scheduled life back home

and more in rhythm with what surrounds me.

Whoa!

Mast down !

Mast over the deck !

This morning, during my watch,

our 70 foot mast was ripped-off

and snapped like a twig.

We were adrift

in the middle of nowhere.

Everything was down in the ocean,

smashing against the hull.

I thought that was obvious

that we'd to cut everything loose,

but Alan had a different plan.

He came up on deck with a knife in his hand and

announced that everything would be coming back on board.

Twelve long hours later,

we finally have the broken mast

and everything else on board.

It turned out a defective piece of rigging was to blame.

But it was hard not to feel like

I should have seen some early sign of this.

Tonight, we are too tired to eat,

we don't have enough fuel to get to mainland Chile,

so our only option is to motor 400 miles to Rapa Nui,

otherwise known as Easter Island.

The word adventure has just gotten overused.

For me, adventure is

when everything goes wrong.

That's when the adventure starts.

A month and a half at sea,

and we are finally lumped in

to the most remote island in the world, Rapa Nui.

We'd only planned to be on Rapa Nui

for a few days to resupply,

but it looks like we're gonna be here

a lot longer than that.

The first person I met is a girl named Makohe,

I saw her teaching some kids to surf

on the inside of the bay.

She's born and raised here

and she's promised to show me around the island.

It's nearly December,

but for the first time, I'm not as worried

about getting to Corcovado before the ice melts.

Coming to Rapa Nui is like going back to the past,

and the people, they have like

their history in their blood.

My mom, she used to live in the time when the plane

came over the island and drop something in the ocean,

the letters, supplies...

- You know ?

- What's changed ?

Yeah, many things.

When we were kids, the entertainment was

to watch the plane coming and going,

and we would sit in this big tree

that we had in the corner of my house somewhere

and would bring sandwiches, we would sit

and would watch the plane come down

for the all time it was there.

- That was the entertainment ?

- Yes

- Everybody watch ?

- Yeah

- So you were the first one on a surf in Rapa Nui ?

When I started surfing, there was only

these guys in the water,

and I had never seen a woman

surfing in the water.

And I told my brother : "Can I go there ?"

because he had so much fun,

he said:

"No, it's only for men."

and then one day I thought:

"I'll take me there, because I wanna see."

I went and it was fun !

And I was the only woman for a long time,

maybe 10 years.

When I'm in big cities,

surrounded by cars or smog,

I just close my eyes

and I think about Rapa Nui,

the blue sky, the nice people,

the ocean, the waves,

I just think about that, in my mind

and that makes me strong,

just having Rapa Nui.

I don't want Rapa Nui to change,

I want it to be like this.

Days have turned into weeks.

When the sea is calm we work on the boat.

When it comes to life,

I explore the volcanic coast line with Makohe.

This island has taken us in like family.

As the weeks pass,

I tell Makohe about my plan to climb Corcovado.

Without hesitation, she asks if she can come along.

At this point, I wonder if any of us

will make it to Patagonia on the boat,

but I promised her I'll ask Allan

if we can squeeze one more person on board.

Yvon had told me about

Jared Diamond's book "Collapse"

and how Diamond presents Easter Island

as a cautionary tale,

a grim example of a society that exceeded

its resources and suffered the consequences.

When the first European set foot on

Easter Island,

in 1700 something,

all the Moais were all standing up right,

but as the population increased, the people

started separating out into different little tribes,

putting all their time and energy into, you know,

outdoing each other, making larger and larger Moais,

and that became the central focus of the entire society.

It took priority over survival, almost,

and eventually, they would cut down their entire forest

to transport these giant carved stones.

And this became such an obsession

that they depleted the island's resources,

let the tribal warfare, cannibalism,

and eventually, the population of the island,

from 30,000 was finally reduced down to 119 people.

I've met Jared Diamond a few times

and talked about his book "Collapse",

and how all the different societies of the past

that he studied have collapsed,

and that:
"what does that means for our society?"

and in the end he really says that

we're making all the same mistake

that all these other societies have made.

As a story of Easter Island goes,

so goes the planet.

It's a haunting thought,

and I'm beginning to see these statues

a little differently.

I remember a quote I read one time from Aldous Huxley,

it never resonated with me much until now.

He wrote:
"Men do not learn very much

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