Quad biking around Rapa Nui

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Tuesday 3.8.2010 day 293
Quad biking around Rapa Nui
We woke up to the most fantastic sunrise and a beautiful sunny day so we headed to the markets and got some more freshly caught fish from the market this time we got a smaller fish about ½ k for about $5 Aus dollars. Then we walked to the bike shop and picked up our Quad Bike and got the same two helmets (including my very big one). We dropped the fish back home and took a packed lunch with us. We headed to Orongo were the bird man ritual were held and the site of a fantastic volcano creator. The bird man ritual started after they got rid of the heads so instead of leaders being born they now chose the braves and strongest men to be the leaders the one that was the first to get the egg of the seabirds. You do not have to go into Orongo to see the bird man island or the Volcano creator as both of these can be seen from outside the site. You need to buy a $60US ticket to get in and that gets you into the Moai nursery as well but you can also see most of that from the road as well you can only not see the creator but the creator at Orongo is better. So if you need to save some money I would not bother to buy a ticket. The only thing you cannot see is the houses at Orongo but there are more of these on the island this is just the only place that they are restored.
I did not enjoy Orongo at all there is a little map and numbers telling you about each thing but it is very repetitive and poor English there is not much to see. One place they say there is painting so I stepped off the path to see if I could see them but it was just fungi the second I stepped off the path this park ranger started blowing a whistle at me. I did not touch anything or go too close to the house. I later read that the paintings have been taken away and are in a museum in London! We then went to another point marked on the map that was supposed to be carving in the rock and were trying to look at them when the park ranger (aka Nazi) started to blow her whistle at us again. We just stood there trying to work out why! We were on the path and not touching the markings on the rock at the sign told us not to. The Nazi still kept blowing the whistle at us and yelling at us in Spanish and waving her arms but we still did not know what we did wrong. A guide standing near us told us that only 5 people are allowed on the platform at a time but this was not written in English at all! So we started to get down then the Nazi arrived and then told us in English that only 5 people were allowed on the platform we explained that we could not read Spanish and that is was not in English so how were we to know. With that she replied I speak English. I tried to explain to her that blowing her whistle at us and yelling at us was no help to us when we did not know what we did wrong at this point she told me that I had no respect for authority and told me to shut up. So we did not get to see the stilly making in the rock but if they are like the rest of the island then they are not worth looking at. On the way out I complained to the park ranger that we check in with as he was very nice and had been to Kakadu in Australia. When we got back to our Quad bike it was parked in and I was in tears now! Eventually someone came and moved their car and we went to have a look at some more sites where there were Moai one of the sites has 7 Moai facing out to sea the only ones on the island that do this (besides a few that are still at the nursery waiting to be put in their final position). Some say they are bad Moai others say that they are looking over the village which goes with my theory that all the Moai are there to look over the people so that are not bad. I think the king that set this up was a Narcissist and got the people making head in his likeness and then he put them at every village to watch over the people so they did not do anything wrong. Most protective statues look out for danger so you would think they would look away for the villages but they look inward as if the people at the danger point to a Narcissist king in my option. We also went and had a look at some of the caves including the one they keep the virgins in before the bird man completion they were part of the prize and they keep them there so there skin would go white. The caves are made from Lava tubes. We also went to one of the beaches that we missed the first day. Anakena which is a fantastic white beach with some resorted Moai. After that we went to the passport office and got our passports stamped and it only cost us a tip! Then we had a look at where the sea turtles should be (I have seem photos of them there our map said they should be there) we thought we saw then but they were not close enough to take a photo of them, lucky I got to see them and swim with them on the Galapagos islands. We then went to the markets and got a few extra things for dinner and got a Rapa Nui t-shirt each then went home and made dinner and make a new Pisco cocktail that was in our Peruvian cook book and cooked up our fish and veggies for dinner.

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