Rapa Nui

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I've always been fascinated by Easter Island, the idea of a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific, miles from anywhere, populated by a people who would then spend hundreds of years obsessively building these slightly bizarre looking stylized statues in ever-increasing sizes.

So, time for a bit of history………

Easter Island was populated in the 5th or 6th century, probably by Polynesians and the Moai building (the big heads!) began around 300 years later. They were built on a platform, or Ahu, to commemorate important ancestors from the village, and would always be facing towards the village ‘square’, usually away from the sea. The smallest was around one metre high, and they gradually grew over the years with the largest one ever erected being ten metres, at Ahu Te Pito Kura.

The statutes were all built of stone, from a giant quarry or crater, called Ranu Raraku (the Moai factory!). The largest ever carved was almost 20 metres in length, but never actually left the quarry. About 300 were completed, either erected or en route to being erected, but there are almost 900 in total on the island in various stages of completion. No one actually knows how the moai were transported form the quarry to their various locations over the island, but legend says that they walked…………! Most of the not quite completed moai at the quarry have been gradually buried over the years through soil erosion so there are loads of half heads, and heads and shoulders poking out of the ground, a bit like that last scene from planet of the apes (the original one of course…….).

By the time the Europeans arrived at the end of the 18th century, only a few of the moai were still standing, and all the moai which are now standing do so because they have been restored. Internal conflict, probably due to increasing populations, decreasing resources and starvation, lead to the destruction of the statues. For about 100 years from the mid 18th to the mid 19th century the islanders then adopted the Birdman cult, which involved an annual race by the chief of each tribe, to be the first to collect the first egg of the Manutara on a nearby islet. The winner returned to the village above the Ranu Kau crater and was declared Birdman (leader) for the year, had his eyebrows and eyelashes shaved off, and lived in isolation (doesn’t sound like a very fun year if you ask me).

We hired a moped to see most of the island, and on the last day, on the obsessive quest to see every last moai on the island (they’re a bit addictive - beginning to see why they built so many….) there was a minor crash. No harm done, I just got covered in mud :-(. It is also worth noting that I had a most excellent pina colada in one of the bars there (served by an extremely camp gentleman……).

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Photos

Ahu Tepeu - enjoying the view and the sunshine...
....yes there was some sunshine I promise

View of Tongariki
shame about the grey sky