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| The 15 moai of Ahu Tongariki all stand where they stood centuries ago on an ahu, a burial platform. We were told that the early Rapa Nui (the name is the same for the island and its indigenous inhabitants) kings were immortalized by the moai so that they could continue to protect their people by projecting their "mana" or spiritual power onto the community. |
On Monday, the 18th of November, we flew five hours over the open South Pacific on LATAM (pronouced lah-TAHM) to Rapa Nui for four nights at the first of three Explora lodges that we booked for this trip. Rapa Nui is served by several flights a week from Santiago and Tahiti, making it much more accessible than a few decades ago when travelers had to book passage on a weekly mail boat from the mainland. "No one comes to Rapa Nui by accident," one guide said. "You have to really want to be here."
Explora picked us up at the tiny airport for the quick drive to the lodge, gave us a late lunch and immediately whisked us off to see the island's best-known attraction, 15 moai statues restored to their original standing positions with their backs to the sea and looking out over what was once the community that erected them.
There are about 900 moai on the island, about 30 of which have been restored to standing positions. Most are where they fell when toppled face-down in the 1770s or in the quarry where they were abandoned either only partially carved or before they were moved to their intended destinations. I think we saw all of the standing moai, plus those at the quarry. We also saw places where moai became entirely buried after being knocked down. Experts thought it better to allow them to remain safe from the elements underground rather than excavated and exposed. The average weight of the statues is 9 to 11 tons and the average height is four meters or about 13 feet, though the tallest is 33 feet or more than 9 meters. Their positions on the ahus makes them seem even taller.
Thor Heyerdahl, the great Norwegian sailor, adventurer and ethnographer, is credited with being the first to restore a moai to its upright position in the 1950s. He remains an important figure in Rapa Nui for his research into the origins of the population, though now the concensus seems to be that he was very wrong. He thought the island's first settlers had come from South America, and he showed that it was possible by making the westbound crossing himself on a raft. He reasoned that Inca-like stonework on the island must have been done by Incans. Now the most credible theory seems to be that the island's first inhabitants came from elsewhere in Polynesia (Rapa Nui is the southeast corner of the triangle that defines Polynesia, with Hawaii at the north and New Zealand to the west), sailed to South America, picked up some masonry skills and returned to Rapa Nui. Evidence, we were told, includes the fosilized bones of a Polynesian chicken that were found in Peru.
There are no written records involving Rapa Nui until 1722 when a Dutch ship captained by Jakob Roggeveen happened upon the island, which he called Paaseiland (Easter Island) in honor of the day that his ship arrived. The indigenous population then was estimated to be as many as 4,000, but it soon shrank due to diseases introduced by the Europeans and the enslavement of islanders by later whaling ships. (By 1877, a decade before Chile annexed the island, there were fewer than 200 persons with Rapa Nui ancestory on the island.)
The crew of a Spanish ship in 1770 reported seeing many standing moai. but four years later, when an English ship captained by James Cook arrived, many had been knocked over and within 60 years the islanders had destroyed this major part of their heritage. A little bit of Internet research comes up with varying chronologies and narratives about the Rapa Nui, creation and destruction of the moai, and the rise of the Birdman cult.
What is clear is that another and perhaps parallel belief system emerged on the island in the 1600s and lasted into the 1860s. Priests and young men went annually to the edge of the Rano Kau crater at the southwest corner of the island. The young men competed in a contest that involved decending steep cliffs to the ocean, swimming more than a kilometer in rough water, climbing steep cliffs on a rock-like island, waiting for sooty terns to lay eggs, and being first to swim back and climb up to Rano Kau with an intact tern egg. The winner would be chief for a year. It's thought that the Birdman cult was the result of a disenchantment with the moai, which had failed to protect their communities from Europeans and failed to keep them prosperous. It faded with the islanders' acceptance of Catholicism and the annexation of the island by Chile.
Today the island seems, like Hawaii, a mix of people of indigenous descent and people from elsewhere, mainly the mainland of Chile. Rapa Nui continues to be spoken and is the first language for many people there. The island is referred to almost exclusively as Rapa Nui, much as many New Zealanders refer to their country as Aotearoa, its Maori name. Without its confounding history of societal self-harm, and the moai, of course, there might be little to draw visitors here. The one or two beaches are nice but unremarkable, the waters are very clear but there are few fish for snorklers to see, and flights to the island are expensive. The island is roughly 14 miles by 7 miles, only about 63 square miles.
What's there to do? More than you might think. The island is laced by trails, and cattle (some branded and owned, some autonomous) and wild horses have the run of the place. Moais, standing or face-down, seem to be everywhere, along with faint petroglyphs. The island's volcanic past is visible in craters and cave-like lava tubes. Each of our three full days there included guided visits to moais or other relics of the past, most involving short (never more than four kilometers) hikes and tons of information from extremely well-prepared guides.
Here are some photos.
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| This trail cuts through what is called the quarry, the source of the stone used for all the moais on the island. The heads visible here sit atop sculptures as fully carved as the ones at Ahu Tongariki but are trapped where they were abandoned just after being carved. The moais' elaborate headdress, seen on one in the Ahu Tongariki photo at the top of this post, were made of a different stone from elsewhere on the island and added to the moai once it was in its final position. |
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| Looking like a pharoah in repose, a maoi was left only partially carved and still trapped in its native stone at the quarry. One guide told us that it would take about 30 men two years to carve a maoi and get it moved to its place on an ahu. Almost 400 of the estimated 900 maois never made it out of the quarry area, which is now second only to Ahu Tongariki as a must-see destination here. |
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| The maoi seem unbothered as they face an eternity of gazing blindly from their imprisonment at the seaside quarry. Maois got eyes, with obsidian as pupils and whites of coral, only when they reached their final destinations. When the maois were toppled, they fell face-first into the ground and none of the fragile eyes remained in place. |
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| Rapa Nui's most completely restored maoi is at Ahu Tahai on the west coast in the northern part of Hanga Roa, the island's only town. The eyes were fabricated of coral and absidian, materials thought to have been used originally. |
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| These moai stand with their backs to the sea at Ahu Nau Nau on the north coast, just east of the beach at Anakena. Four still have their headdresses, which were made of an iron-rich reddish stone to mimic the way the kings styled their long hair using red-tinted mud to hold it in place. |
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| A carved reddish stone sits where it tumbled perhaps two centuries ago when the moai that it sat atop as a headdress was knocked over. |
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| Stonework such as this at Vinapu near Rano Kao crater on the island's southwest coast led Thor Heyerdahl to speculate that the island's early inhabitants had come from the Inca culture of the Andes in South America. This does look like the stone walls of Cuzco and Machu Picchu in Peru. |
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| Rano Kao is one of several major craters left by the volcanos that eons ago rose from the floor of the Pacific Ocean to create Rapa Nui, much as volcanos today continue to build the Big Island of Hawaii 2,200 miles (3,540 kilometerss) to the north. |
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| A rim trail around Rano Kao crater overlooks Motu Nui, the third island in the distance, to which young Rapa Nui would-be chiefs had to swim, camp on while waiting for sooty terns to lay eggs, then swim back with an egg and climb up the cliff to this point without breaking the egg. |
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| This "house" atop the cliffs overlooking Motu Nui is a replica of the semi-buried structures where competitors and priests lived during the Birdman compeition. It has been opened on the side to reveal its bleak interior. The actual entrances were very low holes near ground level on the side facing the sea, This former ceremonial village is known as Orongo. |
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| This drawing of a Birdman holding the egg of a sooty tern is at the Orongo visitors' center. We saw a stream of kindergarten and first-grade students in Hanga Roa dressed in Birdman costumes. |
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| This is an access point into a lava tube, basically a sort of pipe made by lava as it is expelled from a volcano. The outer part of the flow hardened while the center part continued to flow for a while like water in a pipe. Eventually the fluid lava all flowed out, leaving a long, pipe-like structure. This one is at Ana Te Pahu in the western part of the island. The network of tubes combine to be about 7 kilometers long, though treks through them from one access point to another are much shorter. We have been in lava tubes elsewhere and skipped this opportuinity to hike in near darkness over the rough bottom of the tube. |
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| Instead of walking in the tube, we walked on top, which is visible as stretches of exposed black rock in the grasslands near Ana Te Pahu. As we traced the tube's route from above, we came across a hole in the tube's roof that gave us a peek at people inside the tube. |
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| Wild horses, whose ancestors were brought to the island long ago, seem almost as common as white-tailed deer the eastern United States. These horses, never ridden and never shod, roam and graze freely everywhere, including historic sites and the grounds of our Explora lodge. They reminded me of the wild horses on Assateague Island off Maryland in the United States. |
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| The church on Rapa Nui (and I think this is the only one) displays both Christian and indigenous iconography. |
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| This wooden sculpture inside the church seems to refer to the Birdman cult, but this bird is wearing what looks like a papal mitre. There was no English signage in the church and no one there when we wandered in. |
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| The water in the small harbor at Hanga Roa, the island's only town, is incredibly clear, as are the seas that surround the island. We saw several large sea turtles swimming here, including when we left from here on a snorkling trip arranged by Explora up the west coast. Jane did the snorkling and I watched the driver of our boat fish unsuccessfully for tuna. She reported seeing only one fish. We were told that the north coast has more coral and is a better destination for snorkling and diving. |
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| This replica of an early Rapa Nui hut is at Akahanga, a village site on the southern coast. This is one end of the narrow structure. The entrance, which one would have to be on hands and knees to use, is on the side. This upside-down-canoe design is called hare paenga |
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| Also at Akahanga is this circular garden, a design found all over the island. We were told that the earliest cultivation of plants was in the island's volcanic craters whose walls provided protection from the wind and retained warmth. The islanders found that stone-enclosed gardens had the same advantages. |
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| Structures such as this are found in several places, sometimes used as chicken coops, sometimes as markers to guide Rapa Nui sailors home from the sea, and sometimes, as at Orano for the Birdman competition, as places to sleep. |
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| The approach to the Explora lodge on Rapa Nui is meant to evoke the island's traditional earth-sheltered structures. |
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| People wait at the the Rapa Nui airport for the only flight to the mainland on a Friday. |
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| Our LATAM Boeing 787 waits on the tarmac at Rapa Nui to take us back to the Chilean mainland. In 1987, the United States extended the runway here so that it could be used as an emergency landing spot for U.S. space shuttles. A road on the island was paved by NASA to handle construction equipment brought in for the runway project. No shuttle ever landed here. |
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