Rapa Nui

So, first of all, Easter Island is really remote. There are only two places you can fly from or to -- one is Santiago, Chile, the other is Papeete, Tahiti. That is because it is midway between -- 5.5 hours from Santiago and about 6 hours from Tahiti. There is only one runway on Easter Island and, according to our guide, it was built by the Americans in case they ever wanted to land the space shuttle in the middle of the Pacific Ocean -- however, it has never been used for that purpose, but it has made tourism possible on the island. Since there is nowhere else for a plane to land, that one runway has to be clear for any incoming plane. Therefore, no plane can be more than halfway to the island before an outgoing plane is halfway to its destination.

Secondly, Easter Island was named that by a little known Dutch explorer who happened to land there in 1722 on Easter Sunday -- however he was only there for one day. Why that name stuck across time and several languages (it is Isla de Pascua in Spanish) is a mystery. The local folks prefer to call it Rapa Nui and they refer to themselves as the Rapa Nui people. So, that is what I shall call it.

At the airport, we were greeted by a friend of our airbnb host with beautiful fragrant orchid leis and given a brief tour of the town before being delivered to a little bungalow next to a laundry/coffee bar.

We had four days on the island, two of which I had planned in advance over the internet. The first day, we had a guide who gave us a very informative tour of the major historic sites involving the moai (the large stone head carvings). The second day, we went on a horse trip around the north shore of the island which is inaccessible by road. The third day, we (or mostly I) spent recuperating from the horse trip (more on that later). And the fourth day, we hired a rental car to revisit some of our favorite places.

Day 1 - The Moai

Nicolas, our driver and guide from Kava Kava tours, was born and grew up on the island and is proudly of the Rapa Nui people. His grandfather passed on generations of oral traditions to him and he now shares them with visitors to the island. I was happy that our tourist dollars were providing a way for him to remain on the island that he obviously loves so much.

Before our trip, we had read a book about the history and archeology of the island written in the 60’s by a Catholic missionary, Father Sebastian Englert, who lived there for more than thirty years from 1935 until his death in 1969. Englert had learned the language of the Rapa Nui and seemed to be almost as much an amateur anthropologist as a religious envoy. In his book, he relates the oral traditions of the elders in detail. With this background, we were able to engage in some interesting discussions with Nicolas, which he seemed to enjoy.

In the legends, the original inhabitants of the island came from a land to the east (another Polynesian island presumably) that was sinking into the sea. (As we later traveled to Tahiti and New Zealand, we heard similar legends that referred to Hawaiki as the land of origin - so that is something you can google and find out different theories about it.) The Rapa Nui legends talk about shaman dreams that showed them a new inhabitable land so the king sent out seven brave young men in seven canoes to search out the new land. The shaman sent a sea turtle to guide them, then the young men tried to eat it - I guess they were hungry after such a long voyage - but it fought them off (it was really a ninja turtle I guess) and it went back to guide the rest of the people to the new land.

Apparently, some people think that the seven canoes may actually refer to navigating by the seven stars of the Pleiades constellation but, even if they were really good at navigating by the stars, how would they know that following those seven stars would lead to this remote rock. That brings us back to the shaman dreams I think.

Anyway, when the people migrated to their new land, they brought plants and seeds with them and they set up rocky greenhouses to grow crops. I don’t have a photo, but they created round or boat shaped rock enclaves, sometimes several joined in a kind of cloverleaf. The walls would reach about five feet high and enclose an area of about six or eight square feet or so. The rocky walls absorbed the sun’s heat and protected the plants in the enclosure from the ocean winds. The crops we saw included banana trees, corn, and sweet potatoes. Since all the fields and shorelines were littered with millions of smallish lava rocks from the volcanoes that created the islands, it was a plentiful building material.

There seem to be several major historical periods of the Rapa Nui people. At the beginning, there was a period of productivity and peace during which the people developed many village sites around the island and worked together to carve and move the astounding stone heads, or moai (pronounced mo-eye) that the island is famous for.

We visited Rano Raraku, the quarry where the stone artists of long ago made their iconic creations. In the photo below, you can see where a giant stone head was being carved out of its rocky cave, still lying on its back.

Once the top was finished, these statues were gradually detached from the rock beneath, slid down the slope somehow, and hoisted into a standing position so that the backs could be finished. Below, you can see a row of them on the slope below the quarry in various states of completion.

As we walked around them and saw them up close, we could see that each one had distinct features - a higher forehead, or a pointier nose, or a heavier brow.

Here we are with the moai.

Once the carving at the quarry was finished, the moai were moved, apparently in an upright position for some reason, to their assigned village ahu, or platform. Unfortunately, many of them never made it to their destination and lie broken along the way, like this poor fellow.

There are a few places where the moai have been restored to their ahu and stand in magnificent testament to the ancestors of these industrious people. The largest is Tongariki, with fifteen original moai lined up against the background of the endless ocean and sky.

At some point, it is thought that stonemasons from Peru found their way to Rapa Nui as there is one ahu with the Inca trademark of very precise stonework, different from the other walls and platforms on the island.

Here is a detail showing the stonework reminiscent of Machu Picchu.

As the population of the island grew, competition for resources started to put a strain on social relations among the clans and a period of strife and violence ensued. At this time, it is thought that some of the moai were toppled by competing clans.

During the time of strife a new kind of leadership emerged that relied on the annual Birdman Competition in which young men had to climb down a rugged cliff to the ocean, swim out to a rock where migrating birds nested, and wait to be the first to capture an egg when the birds started to lay. They then had to swim back and climb the cliff again with the egg held safely in a headband. The winner of this competition became the leader of the island for one year.

This is the island they swam to.

You’ll have to imagine the steep, rocky cliff that descends to the water just past the edge of the grass as I was not going to lean over to take a picture. Below are the stone houses where the shamans helped the warriors prepare for the ordeal.

When European explorers started to find their way to Rapa Nui, unfamiliar diseases took a toll on the population. Then, Peruvian pirates captured about 1000 of the strongest men and took them away to work in guano mines (bat poop caves - I guess they used it for fertilizing the terraced fields). After many years and complaints from the Rapa Nui, about 100 surviving men were returned to the island. However, they came with more diseases that decimated the population further. At its lowest point, there are said to have been 100 men and only 11 Rapa Nui women remaining. The descendents of these 11 women now number about 3,500 on the island.

Recent efforts to restore some of the moai to their original magnificence have created an entire open air museum on the island and we were fortunate to have a local, passionate guide to give us a tour.

Day 2 - Horse Trip

So the horse trip I had booked online was described as taking you around the north shore, which is inaccessible by road to see some caves and remote village sites, ending at the only beach on the island, and the original landing spot of the first people, for a traditional barbeque. Since we covered the rest of the island the day before, this sounded interesting and would get us off the beaten tourist track. Here we are on our way.

Well, we soon found out that there are good reasons why certain places are off the beaten tourist track. The “shore” consisted of rocky fields extending from cliffs high above the water on one side to the remains of the old volcanoes on the other. The horses had to pick their way carefully and the going was pretty slow.

Wild horses roamed the hills everywhere.

At first, they looked picturesque in the landscape but the further we got, the more bleak the landscape became and the more sparse the grass. Some of the horses started to look pretty gaunt and scruffy and we saw some carcasses gradually turning into skeletons along the way.

The most interesting historic site we saw was this fallen moai in a field by itself. This is a long way from the quarry where it was carve

The advertised “caves” were just holes in the ground covered by rocks which the people used as dwellings during the time of strife when they wanted to hide and be inconspicuous. But you had to crawl through the entrances, which I could not do, so we didn’t go inside any of them.

After about an hour, we stopped for lunch at the remains of an old ahu, now a pile of rocks on the edge of the cliff.

After that, the trip just became an ordeal.

It became increasingly rocky and we had to take the horses down and across steep, rocky ravines where I presume water washes down from the hills during heavy rainfall. This was not fun!

It was during one of these ravine crossings when my horse stumbled with its head down and I fell forward, hanging head down, holding on to its neck for dear life, hollering for help -- most of the group and the guides were a ways ahead. Before help could reach me, my grip slipped and I slid down onto the gravel face first, scraping up my forehead and nose and lips, and banging my knees on the rocks. It could have been worse, but it wasn’t good. The guide helped me clean up my face and bandage my nose a bit and I rinsed the gravel out of my mouth. But, unfortunately, there was nothing for it but to get back on the horse and ride for another three hours through the same kind of rough terrain. One of the guides got down and led my horse through the steepest, most difficult parts, but it was still tough going and I was getting more and more stiff and sore.

Finally -- after forever -- we reached the beach and the promised barbeque. I was so relieved to get off that horse! My right knee had become swollen and I could hardly walk and needed to lean on David. The water looked so inviting, but we didn’t have bathing suits and I couldn’t walk that far. The barbeque was good.

I never confessed to this accident in my Facebook posts as I wasn’t sure how it would turn out and I didn’t want to worry friends and family. It has been touch and go at times since, as we have traveled through Tahiti and New Zealand, but with a lot pain killers, a cane and a knee brace, we have managed. About two weeks later and the scabs on my face have flaked off and my knee is gradually improving.

Day 3

So that is why I spent Day 3 recuperating in bed. David went out in the afternoon to rent a car so we could go out to dinner. It was delicious -- I had octopus tentacles.

Day 4

Our last day on the island we spent driving around revisiting some of our favorite sites and marveling some more at the moai and the people who made them centuries ago. We had a tasty treat of passion fruit meringue pie and Mahina beer.

That helped me feel better.

The next day, off to Tahiti -- the only other place you can fly from Rapa Nui.