Rapa Nui - Easter Island

Wed 10th Up at 6am we were out of the hostel by 6.30. The bus service to the airport was on strike, something to do with bus driver pay, so we ended up taking the taxi to the airport and got there far too early. After battling with a luggage trolley with a wonkey wheel we finally reached a queue for check in situated in a tent on the tarmac. After waiting for about half an hour in the queue outside the tent, we were denied access to the tent interior with our trolley so had to lug our bags around one of those windy queues that go back and forth across the room and eventually we reached the desk and managed to unload. We then had over an hour to waste until we were allowed through another opening in the check-in tent to a further tent that was acting as security and departure gates. We sat in yet another tent and drank tea and ate croissants until we finally joined the queue for security and then onto the departure gate. More queueing and a 200m bus ride later and we were boarding our plane. I wasn't expecting it to be so big, it wasn't a 747 but very nearly that size, with 7 seats across in economy. We had 3 in the centre of the plane after negotiating a change since we hadn't been given seats all together. It was a very posh plane with personal TV sets, a remote control and a huge selection of films, TV programs, music albums and computer games to choose from; so the nearly 5 hour flight whizzed by as we each watched / listened to our own choices. The approach to Easter Island was a bit bumpy and we made a tight turn around the island at a really low level and then came into land with a volcanoe towering above us to the right, to us (from the centre of the plane) it looked like we were flying straight into a cliff! Tris, Celso and I were met with flower necklaces by the woman who runs the hostel we are staying in and we were taken by taxi to the hostel about a 3 minute drive away! We dumped our stuff and went out to explore. It's about a 10 minute walk down to the harbour past buildings and walls made of pumice! The blocks are fitted together quite neatly (not so very different to the early Inca style) and there are also many carved wooden oars and statues acting as pillars. Down at the harbour, under the gaze of a couple of Maoi statues, we sat and ate ice cream - it was very hot, there is a cool breeze off the sea but you can feel the sun burning you all the time. Tristan spotted a dark shape in the water of the harbour and we went to investigate to find that it was a large turtle, probably a Hawksbill. We learned that there are 5 that seem to live in and around the harbour; they don't seem at all bothered by the boats that go in and out and seem to come perilously close to the outboard motors. We wandered along the sea front and wondered at the carved stones and statues, we found a restaurant that served local lobster and reserved one for our evening meal and then sat in another cafe and watched the surfers and the amazingly blue sky. On our way back to the hotel we got some supplies at a supermarket to make sandwiches for tomorrow as we go out to explore the island (we have reserved a couple of quad bikes) and then went out to eat our lobster dinner - a bit disappointing as 1) they left in the intestines so there was a horrid black mush in the middle of the meat (apparently they think it really tasty!) and 2) we are used to the red lobsters with great big juicy claws, but the spiney lobster doesn't have as much meat! However... we are very exited about being here and what we have seen so far is just amazing, the plants are fantastic with huge gaudy coloured flowers everywhere... I'm not sure whether it is just the contrast with all the desert we have been seeing but it is just beautiful. Thurs 11th Wow - what a fantastic day. After a bit of a cautious start and a few bunny hops down the road until we got the hang of our quad bikes, we then whizzed off into the distance. We travelled up the West coast of the island on a dirt track road full of potholes (great fun swerving around them all) to visit all the sites where the Maoi sit facing inland from the sea, the sun from the East lit them up perfectly, it was simply stunning. The Maoi are the statues representing the ancestors; they have enormous heads with big noses, heavy brows, high cheekbones, pouting mouths, prominent chins, long ears and (originally) white and black staring eyes; most are male with bulging bellies, the hands clasping underneath and the belly button clearly showing. Some archeologists consider that the bulging bellies are simply to give the statues stability, but whatever, they are fantastic and all slightly different. The Maoi sit on Ahu, raised ceremonial platforms along the coast, all the statues face inland (as a Rapa Nui Islander told us, why would they face out to sea, there is nothing out there!), and in front of the platform is a plaza and around this there were the boat shaped village houses made from pumice and covered with grass rooves. The Maoi are carved from granite and there is a fantastic quarry at Rano Raraku where about 50 half finished and abandoned Maoi are found in various stages of completion; one hug3e one is still sitting / reclining on the cliff face, almost complete but still completely attached to the bedrock. Some are complete and detached from the rock but then were abandoned and now sit half protruding from the soil that has built up around them, others lie face up or face down in various stages of erosion. We went up and sat amongst these Maoi at 3pm looking out to sea as we had been warned of a potential tsunami wave due to an earlier aftershock on the mainland, however no big waves arrived. Earlier we had visited a lava tube that had been made into a defendable underground fortress, the opening had been narrowed and inside there were stone walls to lie / sit on. During the 16th century, when all the natural resources had gone, the tribes (villages) around the island turned on each other and some resorted to cannabalism (according to some accounts) and so these protected places were very precious. We also visited another cave system, partly collapsed in the centre leaving a gaping hole in the ground between two habitable caves. In this hollow it was very much cooler and a wealth of flowers and banana trees grew giving us some great shade to eat our picnic lunch. I ventured into the caves and found pools of water collected on the floor that has filtered down through the bed rock; this was surely a site worth fighting for! At the northern tip of the island there was an amazing 'typically tropical' beach with white sands and palm trees, but of course with the Rapa Nui twist of several Maoi staring down, fabulous. We sat in the shade eating some of the best apples since we left the UK and watched some hawk-like birds catching and eating beatles! But we couldn't stay too long as we had been warned about the Tsunami and it was approaching 2pm; we had to move on to find higher ground by 3pm. Then, after our visit to the quarry, we headed back down the East coast towards Hanga Roa (the only modern settlement) with the wind in our faces, pulling up our peaked helmets! Now fully confident on our quads we whizzed past the airport and up to the most Southern point on the island at Orongo, a volcanic crater with the most fantastically unique eco-system inside, a sort of marshland with reeds and water and loads of bird life, it looks like a huge witches cauldron. Perched on the crater rim was the ceremonial village of Orongo, quite a late village dating from the late 18th century and full of petroglyph drawings of the sacred birds (Matemate) and gods of the Rapa Nui. Even before the village was built it was from here that the birdman races started and finished, this was an annual event to decide which tribe would be able to elect the leader of the island. A representative from each tribe was chosen to compete; climb down the cliffs and then swim out to an island where Sooty Terns make their nests; the first to return with an unbroken egg to the top of the volcano was the winner. Below the volcano is the area where dead bodies were left in the sun to desicate lying on a wooden platform supported by Maoi like columns. Once dried they were buried though we have found no evidence that graves were marked nor cared for. By this time Tristan was a proficient driver of the quad bike, he had been doing all the turning round whenever we parked up to visit somewhere and had been driving on the remoter stretches of our journey. All good practice for our quadbiking when we get to Aus where we are going out into the desert from Alice! We returned to the hostel at around 6pm covered from head to toe in fine black dust and gratefully hid out of the sun and took cold showers. Celso cooked up a fantastic stew and then we hopped back onto the quad bikes to head down to a hotel that shows the film 'Rapa Nui', a tale that closely follows archeaological evidence and oral stories of what happened on the island when the society collapsed into chaos after all the trees had been cut down. It was a great ending to a great day. Fri 12th Woken fairly early (for holiday mode anyway) by the chickens outside our window, we first returned our quad bikes and then went to visit the LAN airlines office as we had heard that the aftershock earthquake yesterday had meant more flight cancellations and we wanted to make sure that we were unaffected - we were, thankfully. Then we went in search of souvenirs and spent several hours wandering the town and looking at all the shops. Having found our beautifully carved Maoi statues and some patches for our travel Tshirts we made our way down to the harbour to take another look at the turtles. The turtles were swimming and the sun was blazing; Tristan and I decided to venture into the water to see if we could get close up to a turtle; the sea was beautifully cool but the sharp spikes of volcanic rock protruding from the sand made our leaps over the waves an occasionally painful sport, and the turtles seemed to keep to the rocky areas as they grazed on the very sparce seaweed. Feeling that I was burning we emerged from the sea and returned to the hotel to avoid the sun at its zenith; the hottest part of the day here is about 2pm, this is when the sun is at its highest point (not 12 midday)... because they want to keep time as close to the mainland as possible they only have a one hour time difference from Chile mainland (or 2 hours in summer - they have some sort of reverse daylight savings mechanism where they change the clocks by an hour in the summer); this means that it doesn't get light in the mornings until about 8am and puts midday at around 2pm. Thankfully for us this late sunrise means that the cockerels didn't start crowing until about 7:30am! Around 4pm we went out to visit the museum. It was a very small affair with a lot of panels explaining the oral history of the island including how they lost the ability to read and write their written language when in the late 18th century Peruvian slavers stole many people off the island. After a lot of political negotiations lasting over 10 years they were allowed to return to the island. However about 2/3 of the people had died in the mines where they had been forced to work and those that returned brought diseases to the island that killed more than half of the remaining population. After all this there was noone who knew how to read and write the Rapa Nui language and so the only history that is known was passed orally or in the form of songs and legends told in dance. We were also able to confirm parts of the Rapa Nui film that we had questioned last night such as a cave where virgins were forced to live for months before they wed in order that their skin would turn pale and the format of the bird man competitions. We then returned to the hotel to pack up our bags for our flight tomorrow and then waited our pick up at 8pm to go to have our Umu supper, a traditional Rapa Nui feast where all the food is cooked wrapped in banana leaves on hot rocks in the ground. After having our faces painted in traditional patterns by 3 scantily clad (thongs only) Rapa Nui men we chanted some lines as the food was uncovered from the earth, fantastic smells and a lot of steam!! We feasted on tuna and other fish, sweet potatoes, pork and chicken, salads and rice and then were invited to watch traditional dances and songs that told the history of the island. We were also shown some dances from Tahiti (the nearest neighbouring Polynesian island) to show the differences and similarities. It was a very energetic performance with lots of scantily clad and very sweaty men, and 3 amazingly bum wiggling, hip swaying women!! A great evening topped off by emerging into the night air to see fantastic stars overhead and my first ever view of the milky way! Sat 13th Blast those cockerels, we nearly had a perfect lie in! Then we sat around having long conversations with a French couple traveling with their 3 daughters, 6, 8 and 10 on a 7 month trip. They have been through Asia and Australasia and are returning to France through South and North America, we were comparing notes on places to visit and home schooling! Then out to the airport and onto the flight to Santiago. When we arrived around 8pm I decided to have one more go at getting LAN to pay for our hotel stay since we had heard stories on the island of people being put up for 3 or 4 nights when their planes had been cancelled. Instead they said we could go to New Zealand on a flight leaving that night at around 11pm, so we waited around, our names having been put on the standby list... they were pretty sure we would get on the flight as it was another one that had been rescheduled and lots of people were not turning up at the right times for their rescheduled flights. Sure enough we got on and even had a spare seat beside us! Sun 14th As far as we are concerned this day never existed, we took off on Saturday and landed in the morning on Monday having crossed the international date line, so a 12 hour flight made us lose this whole day! Mon 15th We landed in Aukland at 4am so the airport was fairly empty but it still took us ages to get through passport control and then biohazard control where our Maoi, llama, vicuna and alpaca wooden carvings were scrutinized to make sure we weren't bringing any pests into the country. We rang the hotel that we had booked for the 16th and 17th and asked if they had a room we could have and fortunately they did; so we took the airport bus into the town and then dragged our bags the 1.5 blocks. The man at reception was very kind and allowed us into the room (even though check in time was after 2pm and really he should have charged us for the night of the 14th too) and we slept until midday. Then we went out to explore the local area, Queen Street (for those of you that know Aukland), in the centre of the city. It is an area full of Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese restaurants and then a mixture of very classy and extremely expensive clothes boutiques and a huge number of souvenir shops full of Kiwi inspired goods. We spent hours 'just looking'! After an early supper we had lovely long hot showers and fell to sleep (again).