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Published: September 8th 2007
Easter Island: Moai statues "Ahu Nau Nau" on the beach at Anakena
These moais stood on the beach, surrounded by palms facing inland and are some of the most well preserved.Day 167 to Day 172 ( 13.06.07 - 18.06.07 )
A tiny isolated place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
Going to Easter Island is something we never thought would happen to us, but fate had it in our hands that gave us wind of news of a ticket sale on at Lan airline....the only airline that flies the 5 hr flight to Easter Island, and we were there at the right time luckily!
As one of the world's most famous yet least visited archaeological sites, Easter Island is a small, hilly, now treeless island of volcanic origin and we felt priviledged to be able to go there and experience it! We had anticipated a deserted island with a limited population and not so many tourists, travelling in low season we were blessed with something similar to this, often feeling alone whilst walking around.
Easter Island is over 2,000 miles (about a 5hr flight) from the nearest population center, (Tahiti and Chile), making it one of the most isolated places on Earth. A triangle of volcanic rock in the South Pacific - it is best known for the giant stone monoliths, known as Moai,
Bright and early wakeup with the 15 moais.
2 French, 1 Israeli, 1 Swede and an English girl watching the moais wakeup! that dot the coastline.
Easter island homed a remarkable society that developed in isolation on the island. For reasons still unknown they began carving giant statues out of volcanic rock. These monuments,(moai) are some of the most incredible ancient relics ever discovered. As a World Heritage site, it is suprising that the Easter Islands ruins are still very accessible. So far there are no fences or signs telling you to stay our or watch where you walk, perhaps this is because it seems everywhere you walk is an archeological site! One big open air museum that is great for exploring!
The islands most famous features are its enormous stone statues called moai, at least 288 of which once stood upon massive stone platforms called ahu. There are some 250 of these ahu platforms spaced approximately one half mile apart and creating an almost unbroken line around the perimeter of the island. Another 600 moai statues, in various stages of completion, are scattered around the island, either in quarries or along ancient roads between the quarries and the coastal areas where the statues were most often erected - we could have spent weeks looking around and yet we only
Sunrise side portraits
A cloudy and rainy sunrise, but despite the weather the Moais failed to disappoint. had a few days, so we had to make the most if it. The ahu platforms of Easter Island were the sanctuaries of the people of Rapa Nui, and the moai statues were the ritually charged sacred objects of those sanctuaries. While the statues have been toppled and re-erected over the centuries, the spiritual presence of Rapa Nui is still strongly present at the ahu sites and atop the sacred volcano - which is possibly one of the windiest places on earth (see photos!)!
The Moai's
The moai statues did not disappoint us in any way, they were powerful reminders of a past unwritten and a past in which people abided to different rules in life and society, and people who in the end became the be all and end all of themsleves, through their own doing, without outside influence, because of their inherent obsession with the now-famous moai statues - reading a little but not enough, we understood that the Rapi Nui people destroyed their land and commuity with their competitiveness between clans in making the biggest and best moai statues - we are not historians, but a bit of background info on the islanders
Ahu Tongariki - 15 Moais
here the moais are in a large number, the largest collection in one place on the island, there are also others lying on the ground goes along the lines of - they were pressured from the different clan leaders to make more statues-this meant carving more rock from the ground - they needed to fell more trees to make fire and to allow for the moving the statues process - the deforestion caused had numerous devastating effects, most notably, the fishermen had no wood to make new boats to go fisging with, so there was no food, there was no planting, so no new new trees to continue the fire and felling process - slowly slowly the foundations of their all sharing community broke down, clans began stealing wood and other valuables from each other and a state of warfare broke out, this involved other clans pushing moai statues down and destroying their society.
In exploring the island, one day despite the weather not living up to expectations (it was winter) we hired a car (well borrowed from the lovely lady who owned the place where we were staying) and set off well before the crack of dawn to witness something special, the rising sun lighting up the moais! Well, good intentions aside, it poured down and so clouds made it a less than
An enchanting island
looking at the 15 moais from a distant, rugged coast line, fierce waves and wild horses complete this picture exciting experience, but nevertheless cool to see. Arriving late at night, the previous evening, we had no idea what to expect from the island and how the famous statues would actually look. Thus we were still overly excited to see the statues in their morning glory - we were spoiled first - as our first sightings were the lined up 15 moais, one of the most powerful formations on the island! The rest of the day driving around exploring the caves, volcanoes and moais did not disappoint - it was great! There was literally hundreds of moais lying or standing around everywhere - soo many photographic opportunites that left us wrapped in wonder of a people that once was.
Visiting Easter Island was a once in a life time experience for us, and goes on our lists of highlights in our trip, it is actually hard to explain the experience we had, but its an incredible place and you have to sort of be there to believe it and feel it - its even better than it appears on tv. The island itself, in the middle of the Pacific ocean really feels a million miles from anywhere else in
Rano Raraku - Production area
This is where almost all the island statues were produced, carved directly from the volcanic rock. more ways than one. We were fortunate enough to have a fantastic view of both ocean and moais from our hotel, one of four rooms that local lady Carmen rented out up on the cliff top - from here we could see how incredible this island is and how truly beautiful and unspoilt. The islanders today live their lives in a typical island way, despite the Chilean influence and police supervision, they ride wild horses around bare back and drink the days away enjoying themselves. The streets are rough and bumpy, there's only 1 shop and a daily fish market from where we bought and ate a 4kilo delicious fresh pacific-tuna fish! There is a disco, and a bar or two and many tourist stalls along with a spectacular wild rugged coastline and several palm trees, and thankfully so far tourism hasn't in any way taken away the islands charm and mystery.
There's no better way to explain our experience of the island than to look at the photo's - just a glimpse of what it's like there. It was an incredible few days, and we still can't believe we got to go!
Chile - Santiago
Rano Raraku - Moais en-route
These Moais bodies continues underground for a few meters, unfortunately they never made it to their destination from the quarry and are scattered around this area As our last stop in South America, Chile had a lot to live up to. We have to admit it wasn't our favourite country in latin america, but still an interesting one. Arriving into Santiago we were blinded by the cities smog, and bad weather, it was winter of course but the grey haze that hung over the city for the duration of out time there sort of clouded our judgement of the place which we hear, in summer is really beautiful. First impressions were that Santiago was a city that strove to be modern, in a forward thinking country, the people and fashions were very up to date and quality of life here rivals that in America for most people.
We visited the Museo Chileno De Arte PreColombino and some of the cities look out points thats showed us just how big and sprawling the city was. Here we met up with some friends we had made at spanish school in Buenos Aires, Hans and Jil from Holland, and went out for an interesting Chinese in the city and drank beers in the local hangouts which was great fun, and good to see them!
Pucon
View from the top of windy Rano Raraku
we climbed this extinct volcano and quarry area where most of the moais were produced to get an appreciation of the island (15moais in background) - Volcanoes and Chile's Lake District
We headed down Chile's main and only road south to a tiny mountian side village called Pucon which is in Chile's lake district area. Separated only by the mountianous Andes, the lake district here is similar but just as nice as the lake district are in Argentina. We did a whole day trek around one of the lakes, it was a fantastically cold and crisp day, and as we trekked high up around the mountains surrounding the lake, the snow got slowly deeper right up to our knees. The trail was thus hard to follow, no existant in some parts as the snow began falling deeper, and we sort of got lost, well off track, good news is after a few hours getting wet and cold we found our way all around the lake. Pucon was a really heartwarming little place, all the wooden houses had log fires roaring and plenty of red wine going around.
Three of the four days we were there were totally cloudy and snowing, then on our last morning we went outside to crystal clear blue skies and right on our doorstep almost, was a huge
Rugged coastline of Easter Isand
a bit rough, but this rocky coast was still beautiful towering white (snow-covered) volcano, the other thing that Pucon is famous for - we couldn't believe we almost missed seeing it, an active smoking volcano that was so fitting and pittoresque in this landscape! Definitely a place we wouldn't mind having a country-house in to relax! (wishful!)
After almost a month in Chile and Easter Island, our time in South America was up (6 months flew by!) and we have to say we were gutted, we'd had such a good time and had come to feel quite at home in our not-so-much-spanish-speaking existence here. At the same time we knew a new continent was upon us, and an english speaking one at that, a nice refreshing break - Australasia here we come!
Again we're sorry but we are so behind on getting these blogs online (almost 3 months i think), truth is we have since been in New Zealand and now Australia, and it's been hectic but fantastic, much more than we imagined, in a few days we leave Australasia for Asia, first stop Bali! The trip's 2/3rds over, we can't believe how fast it is going but we are loving every minute of it and so grateful
A moai sleeps
one of so many fallen moais, this was of the few face up ones we came across we are able to see all these things and places!
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Foltas
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Nicenice...
Det ser helt underbart ut... ser dock lite roligt ut med mycket kläder på er i Chile.. har alltid trott det var sommar året runt där... men det är väl bara för att ni är högt upp kanske.. hare bra hejhej...