Easter Island

Easter Island, Chile (2009)

Easter Island is the world’s most isolated inhabited island, 5 hours by plane off the coast of Chile. Easter Island (also called Rapa Nui) is probably best known for those giant head statues (called Moai), but also has an incredibly interesting and mysterious history. It was first settled as early as 300 CE by Polynesians (2000 miles away), who had to abandon their island because it was sinking so they built a bunch of canoes, piled on their whole civilization and shipped off eastward into the unknown. When Captain Cook visited the island a thousand years later one of his crew members, who was Polynesian, was actually able to communicate with the islanders. The Rapanui thrived for centuries due primarily to their expertise at fishing. They built numerous Moai, and their population surged to 10,000. However, they were harvesting trees faster than the trees regenerated. Soon enough the island was almost completely deforested, and fertile soil that had built up for thousands of years was eroding off the island because there were no trees to keep the soil in. Soil nutrients leached easily in the porous volcanic rock, and agriculture dwindled. At this point the Rapanui turned on each other for the few remaining resources. When Western explorers first landed on the island, the few remaining Rapanui were still at war, but by then the civilization had been destroyed. Western diseases wiped out most of the last of the Rapanui.

With such an interesting history and art forms to explore, we forgot that Easter Island is also something of a sub-tropical paradise. There is no land ownership, and laws prevent it from being built up so the island is still very basic. We found a local islander with extra rooms in her house that she rents out to tourists. Our room looked out onto the sea.

There is something to be said about such isolation. The air we breathed had not been touched by a city. The water was pure. The fish did not have mercury/lead built up.

Pink sand beach (a bit oversaturated so the pink is hard to see).

Pretty views in all directions.

There were lots of these structures on the island. These are chicken coops that the Rapanui had built. The original descendents had actually brought chickens with them on their canoes from Polynesia, and chickens were an important part of their diet.

Something shiny catches our eye down by the water.

These stones are perfectly round and smooth, and hold unusual magnetic powers. A compass will not work in proximity with these stones. These rocks cannot be found anywhere else on the island. It is assumed that the original Rapanui brought these stones with them on their canoes all the way from Polynesia.

Easter Island is called the Navel of the Planet because of its isolated central location, and this stone is called the Navel of the Navel.

The great quarry, from which came all the rock needed to build the Moai.

Hundreds of unfinished Moai lay abandoned in the soil, the development of which was interrupted by the wars that broke out and eventually destroyed the civilization.

View from the quarry.

Two unfinished Moai lying head to toe.

Inset into the rock here was the largest Moai on the island.

Walking around the “art studio”.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Each Moai face is unique, based abstractly on an important person from the tribe.

You lookin’ at me?

A night at the Roxmoai.

This one was not in the style of the rest. It appeared to be more “human” with better developed legs in a kneeling position.

A view of Tongariki, the site of the most Moai. It is likely that the tribe at Tongariki was the most powerful, and thus able to have the most Moai.

The 2^nd one from the right has a red hat thing called a top-knot. Actually, all the Moai have top-knots, but they were all knocked off in the wars and now we cannot determine which top-knot goes with which Moai.

Not the most comfortable position.

Carmel demonstrates the acro-yoga goddess pose.

Smooch!

Ehh, no idea who came up with these ideas…

I’m flying! (The Moai right beneath me totally looks like he’s looking at me in amazement).

Here is Carmel doing the jumpy thing, just to show that I didn’t photoshop it.

Almost hit my head on a cloud there.

Advanced yoga.

Even more advanced yoga.

Last shot of Tongariki, taken at sunrise on our last day on the island.

Our trip happened to coincide with the festival Dia de Carmen, which involved massive amounts of free food given out by 2 families. We didn’t have any plates so we grabbed some leaves and they plopped the food right on. Sooo good.

We went to visit one of the three volcanoes (Orongo) on the island. The top of the volcano looks like a crater.

Just off the coast of the Orongo volcano is the venue for the Birdman Contest. In attempt to stop the wars, the Rapanui decided to hold a contest each year—the tribe of the winner of the contest would then rule the whole island for the year. The contest involved climbing down the cliff face, swimming out to the far island, finding and grabbing an egg of a specific bird, then swimming back to the main island with the egg. Unfortunately, the contest did not actually quell the fighting.

These were houses built for the nobility to watch the Birdman Contest.

One night we went to see traditional Rapanui dance.

They told the story of their island through dance.

This guy portrays the Birdman Contest part where they swim out to the far island.

This part conveys…wait, who is that dancing up on stage with the Rapanui girls?

Okay so they had this final audience participation dance where each of the female dancers grabbed a guy, and each of the guy dancers grabbed a woman from the audience. Carmel, who was struggling to stay awake up until this point, was highly amused and went rapid-fire on the photos.

What followed after the performance was perhaps the most memorable experience from the trip. They continued to play music on the speakers, and there was a bar at the back that was still open. But, all the tourists left immediately except for us; and, the local Rapanui were just hanging out having some drinks. So we were just sitting there trying to figure out what was going on when one of the Rapanui offered me a beer. I accepted and we got to talking (in Spanish). He got really excited when he found out that I am an ecologist because the owner of the club and his friends there that night were the leaders of the ecology association for the island. So he called them over and we ended up talking and drinking all night about all sorts of things, but primarily on the ecological problems and solutions for the island. It was definitely a rare non-touristy part of the trip that was very memorable. (Side story- at one point the original Rapanui offered us some marijuana, and I asked if it was legal on the island because they had dogs sniffing all the bags at the airport. He told us not to worry, that there are only 4 police on the island, and he was one of them…).