Rapa Nui, 12 October 2015

Today's journey begins at the Rano Raraku quarry, where the Moai were carved from volcanic rock.

Some moai are just about underground.

These two are still being carved.

Migration of the Moai.

Ernie and Bert.

Rock stars.

Anahanga as seen from the quarry

Petroglyphs at Papa Vaka

There are two horizontal slabs with significant petroglyphs at Papa Vaka, both depicting marine life, fishing, canoes, and other glyphs to ensure a good harvest.

Octopus? Crab? Spaghetti?

A tuna, and a shark. Other glyphs are there but are more difficult to see.

Seven Moai

Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey

More Moai. These seven were along the road returning to Hanga Roa, I didn't catch their names.

Dinner and a Show

For dinner, we splurged on a traditional celebration and show by a local Rapa Nui cultural group.

Traditional Rapa Nui entertainment

Before dinner, we were serenaded with traditional songs sung in Rapa Nui.

The cooking pit, minus the sand and the blankets

Dinner was cooked over hot rocks in a pit in the ground. The food was inside hollow bamboo stalks, covered in banana leaves, then blankets, and finally buried in lava sand.

The lava blocks around the pit have holes in the top. Traditionally, the blocks were set in the ground parallel to each other a canoe-width apart, and the length of a canoe. The holes held the ends of the wooden ribs to form the hull of an upside-down canoe, bent over from one row to the other. This held the ribs of the canoe in place while the rest of canoe was being built.

Rack with bamboo stalks

Here's dinner, still inside the bamboo stalks. There was chicken, tuna, some other local fish, sweet potatoes, and banana cake for dessert. All cooked in the pit. The Dutch and their ovens have nothing on this!

The Show

The King with a Moai

I won't try to retell the story,  but here's the king with his Moai.

Warriors of the tribe

Brave warriors to protect the king...

dancing ensues

...and much partying and dancing.


That's all for today

The next update will be the Ana Kai Tagata cave and the Orongo village.


Jerry

Rapa Nui, 11 October 2015

First stop today was a visit to the Museo Antropologico P. Sebastion Englert. Even my pigeon Spanish can translate 'Museo,' and the map shows exactly where it is: find the cemetery, go up two blocks and turn left. I only got lost a couple of times.

The museum has displays with descriptions in both Spanish and
(thankfully) English, telling the history of the Rapa Nui people, some speculation on the significance of the Moai (big stone heads), the rise of the birdman cult, the warring tribes, influence of western civilization, and has artifacts from around the island.

Moai at the Museo

There are Moai all over the place, about 900 total scattered around the Island in various conditions. The warring tribes knocked over most of statues, so there are fallen Moai lying face down in front of their Ahu (stone platforms), some intact, some broken. The Moai that are standing on their Ahu have been re-erected.

Rapa Nui Manuscript

The spoken language of the Rapa Nui people has been handed down and is still spoken today, but the written language has been lost. It is speculated that only the elite members of the tribes were taught to read and write. There are carved wooden manuscripts with Rapa Nui writing, the lines of text are written horizontally (left to right? right to left? who knows). At the end of a line of text, the manuscript is turned upside down and the next line is read, so every other line is inverted. Wikipedia has an article on this writing style, look for "reverse boustrophedon."

Sculpture at the museum

There's an interesting sculpture at the museum. I don't know its significance.

The Cemetary

The catholic cemetery is outside of town, and is quite colorful.

Cemetery in Hanga Roa

Moai everywhere!

Tahai Moai

On the edge of Hanga Roa are a few nice examples of Moai standing on their Ahu. There's not a lot to say: they're big, carved out of lava rock, and standing on their Ahu.

Moai at Hana Kio'e

Moai at Hana Kio'e

Complete Moai

This Moai is complete with eyes and a Pukao (top hat). The hat was quarried from a different volcano and made of red lava rock. Many of the Moai on the island have lost their hat and eyes, so this one is significant for it's completeness.

Toppled Moai

Toppled Moai at Akahanga

Leaving the village of Hanga Roa, there are many sites of fallen Moai. This is one has a sign that reads, "Ahu Ura Uranga te Mahina", and another sign here reads, "Akahanga."

The Quarry

The Rano Raraku quarry from a distance

The quarry at Rano Raraku is open to visitors from 0900 until 1800, and it was already 1730 when we arrived. We saw just enough from a distance to convince us that we really need half a day to wander around in there.

Tongariki 

Tongariki has the most stunning display of Moai on the island, with 15 statues lined up near the ocean. The scale is massive, visible for miles.

Tongariki Moai

That's it for today. Tomorrow, a visit to the quarry, petroglyphs, and more Moai.

Jerry

Okay... where to begin. It's been quite a few years since I updated this blog, it took some effort to figure out my old login, but (obviously) I succeeded.

First, the back story.

A few months ago my friend Vernon returned from Palau and told me his world travels were amazing, but getting increasingly difficult due to his limited vision. He suggested I join him on a journey to, perhaps, Cancun, where there's snorkeling for his interests and desert for my exploration. Cancun? Really? How about somewhere more exotic, less traveled, certainly less commercialized, somewhere neither of us have gone (not difficult there...), and maybe some place I don't know anybody who's visited.

Me and my big mouth.

After a couple of months of anticipation, I picked Vernon up early on Friday morning (9-Oct-2015), drove to the long-term parking lot in Burlingame where we caught a shuttle bus to San Francisco International. The flight from SFO to LAX was uneventful, and thankfully the stopover in Los Angeles was short. The next flight was equally uneventful ... but not so short. Eight (or so) hours later we were in Lima, Peru for fuel and exchanging passengers-- they didn't even let us off the plane. I was hoping to pick up a refrigerator magnet from Peru, but it was not happening this trip. Then another eight-ish hour flight to Santiago, Chile where we were processed through customs (easy) and boarded a 787 for the last leg of our journey.

BIG plane, tiny airport

After another six hours in the air the wheels touched the tarmac at Mataveri International Airport in Hanga Roa, Chile, our final destination. After 26 hours of travel, it was finally getting real. During the entire trip I kept asking myself, "Am I really on Easter Island?"





Day One: October 10, 2015

After collecting our bags, I hailed a taxi. Okay, to be honest 'hailing' is not entirely accurate, and neither is 'taxi.' A guy in a rusty Nissan with a hand-lettered 'TAXI' sign on the dashboard offered us a lift. For only CLP$4,000 he drove us to Oceanic Car Rental where I had arranged to rent a Suzuki Jimny (in the U.S. it's called a Suzuki Samari) for the week.

Next stop, the hotel: The Mataveri Inn. If you know me, I've always said, "I own a GPS not because I want one, but because I need one" because I can't navigate my way out of a paper sack. Unfortunately, my old Garmin doesn't have maps for Easter Island. But that's okay, I printed out the Google map of Hanga Roa. Unfortunately, there are no street signs in Hanga Roa, but that's okay because there are no house numbers either. Sigh. We drove in circles for an hour searching for the Mataveri Inn before I stopped at the car rental place and asked for directions. The guy used google maps on his phone and pinpointed the Inn on the rental car map, but nope, nada, no inn there either. Okay, I remember the web page for the inn has a phone number so I found an internet cafe to look it up, and the very helpful lady at the cafe knows the innkeeper (in a village of 3300 people, it's not too unlikely), called her, and gave us directions! When we arrived at the inn, we found out they had sent a car to the airport to meet us, and neither of us saw the sign with Vernon's name misspelled. And, the place is called Cabanas Mataveri, not Mataveri Inn, both on the sign and on the map.


Dos Locos Touristas

Confident that we now have a place to stay, it's time to play tourist. The best part of being a tourist on Easter Island: I couldn't get too terribly lost, there's only one village, and all roads lead back home. I randomly choose a road, and we arrived at the Rano Kau crater. It's about a mile to the far lip of the volcanic crater and the lake in the middle is a fresh water swamp teeming with life.

Rano Kau

The island has a number of small coves with fishing boats but no ship harbor (which begs the question how they get bulk supplies to the island.)  This is the busier harbor in Hanga Roa, the other harbors I saw seemed quieter but perhaps deeper, judging by the size of the boats.

Hanga Roa Harbor at sunset

Hanga Roa fishing boats

We choose a random restaurant for dinner at the harbor, a cozy place with a french theme and a wooden ship motif inside. The Paella for two was outstanding: shrimp, baby lobster, calamari, and other locally caught fish, and the leftovers was breakfast for the next four days. I still don't know how "doggy bag" would translate to Chilean Spanish, but we had it wrapped up to go.

It was dark when we got back to the hotel and I took a couple of shots of the starry night from the road outside the inn.  I was looking south-west, so I suspect there are constellations in the picture that I can't see from home in San Jose, California. If someone would post a comment identifying what's in the photo, I'd appreciate it.

Starry night outside Cabana Mataveri

That's all for day one on Isla de Pascua, check back soon for day two.

Jerry