Off to Easter Island...

Six of us from the Orion took the Lindblad extension package to Easter Island. The Holiday Inn Express at the airport would not store baggage for non-returning guests for over 24 hours (some restrictive trade agreement with the airport), so the Lindblad representative assisted by taking us to the Left Luggage office at Sandiago airport - we didn't want to take all our cold weather gear to tropical Easter Island!

The flight to Easter Island (SCL - IPC) was an almost 5 hour epic on a brand new LAN 787-9 Dreamliner - these are wonderful new airliners compared to the clunky old Boeing Jumbos that Qantas seem to rely on. If we had realised how long this flight was, and in the general direction of Australia, we might have considered an alternate route home, from Easter Island, to Papeete and then Sydney. That would've saved 10 hours extra flying time, nothing to be sneezed at, and we might even have managed a holiday in Tahiti! But, we didn't think of that when we planned this trip and made the flight bookings.

This is the flight path we could/should have taken home, but instead, our bookings have us returning to Santiago.

Easter Island has an amazing story to tell. Firstly, it is the most remote inhabited island in the world, being over 2000km from Pitcairn Island. It is a special territory of Chile, and since 1995, has been named as a UNESCO World Heritage site thanks to its famous and mysterious statues, known as mo'ai or ma'oi, built by the Rapa Nui people and tall, averaging about 4m high. The island is quite small, 164sq.km and has a current poulation of 6-7,000.

The airport runway near the south west corner of Rapa Nui conveys the scale of this island.

Lindblad didn't send an expedition specialist with us, but recruited a local guide, Ata, a well educated and extremely knowledgeable guy with part Italian heritage. We were to learn from Ata, and by our own reading, that almost everything about Easter Island's history is hotly contested, and sometimes mythology seems more dominant than demonstrable facts. We don't know of any peoples whose past is so uncertain! The trouble is, the inhabitants left little in the way of written records - petroglyphs are mostly spiritual. Oral story-telling traditions seem to be poor and variously aid or conflict with carbon dating and scientific research.

Ata's father is Claudio Cristino, an archaeologist from the University of Chile and a co-founder of the Easter Island and Oceania Studies Centre. He has worked on the restoration of Rapa Nui sites. Ata said he didn't follow his father's footsteps in academia, but by doing this job, he is clearly doing his bit to propagate Rapa Nui's fascinating history to the world. Claudio is listed on Lindblad's website as a staff Cultural Specialist. Ata comes with a good pedigree!

The island we call Easter Island has many names. The Easter name was given by Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen when he arrived here on Easter Sunday, 1722. Our flight didn't come to Easter Island though, the official destination was the Spanish version Isla de Pascua, and Mataveri Airport's code is IPC . The local population call the island Rapa Nui, which means "Big Rapa", after, apparently, its resemblance to the smaller island of Rapa further west in the Pacific Ocean. But that's not the end of its names - there is Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka which may mean "this little piece of land of Hau Maka, but the word "pito" also translates as "navel" which leads to an alternate meaning, "the Navel of the World". Such ambiguities are just the beginning on this island which we will respectfully refer to as Rapa Nui in posts to this blog.

Between the years 700 and 1100, Polynesian people first came to Rapa Nui from the Gambier Islands (2,600km away) and the Marquesas Islands (3,200km) in catamarans and canoes - these guys were no mean sailors! - and on these flimsy vessels they carried all the means to extend their traditional islander civilisations. The popularity of sweet potatoes (a South American vegetable) amongst Polynesians suggests that at least some migration to here (and other islands) came from the east.

Regardless, Ata explained to us that the arriving peoples brought Polynesian traditions with them, but were determined to shape and vary them in particular ways. This is no doubt true, and explains differing Polynesian cultures in all their locations. Several clans arrived here. The big mystery on Rapa Nui is why the clans here developed idolatory to a ridiculous extent and competition between them brought about their own destruction. Ata set about telling us this story, but it proved to be hard to separate fact from myth!

Ahu Tahai

Our first exposure to all of this was Ahu Tahai in the Rapa Nui National Park, quite near Hanga Roa, the only town on the island. All the mo'ai in Rapa Nui were destroyed in a crisis about which were are yet to learn, but Tahai (and other sites) had been restored by an American archaeologist, the late Dr. William Mulloy in 1972. The site has a number of erect mo'ai, all facing away from the sea, including five on a single altar, an ahu. UNESCO has apparently directed that most sites be NOT restored, but be left as they were found.

Mo'ai rest on altars, known as ahu.

Mulloy re-erected five mo'ai on their ahu here at Tahai, but most are in poor shape. Neck breaks have been visibly repaired.

We learned a lot on this first visit. The mo'ai, Easter Island Heads, are statues of men in which the head is disproprtionately large compared to the body, and don't have legs. This constant theme is no doubt symbolic, and maybe partly due to practical reasons. They (mostly) all face inland, supposedly guarding clan lands. The statues are made from blackish soft volcanic ash (tuff), but their heads are topped with a different material, a reddish coloured rock called scoria. Almost all mo'ai now have empty eye sockets, but one at Tahai has had its eyes restored - these are made from obsidian, and have particular sacred powers.

A restored mo'ai, complete with scoria hat and obsidian eyes.

A memorial to Mulloy at Tahai acknowledges his contribution to Rapa Nui. In part it says "by restoring the past of his beloved island, he also changed its future". Ata explained the truth of this statement, how the restoration has delivered pride and self esteem to the Rapa Nui population.

A raging surf rolls in on the north-east coast of Rapa Nui at Tahai.

There's a very small rocky beach at Tahai, enjoyed by a few sunbakers and determined swimmers. This area looks like a sort of port.

Ata taught us that carving, moving and erecting the mo'ai depleted the resources of Rapa Nui, a situation which got worse as apparent competition between the clans caused the mo'ai to get bigger and bigger. The fact that the mo'ai were all destroyed later in some crisis suggests that the people identified and protested against this folly, but were apparently powerless to influence the leadership, the Rapa Nui royalty. It seems that the powerful were far more concerned with death, and possibly the afterlife, than in sustaining the living!

Most mo'ai were pushed over and broken during a crisis.

Ata showing us the foundations of canoe shaped shelter at Tahai. It would have been used for sleeping and storage, but cooking and living would be outside. The tiny entrance at the right.