Easter Island (Rapa Nui)

We flew from Santiago in Chile to Easter Island, which is one of the most isolated places on earth.

Easter Island was settled by the Polynesians who arrived in wooden canoes from across the sea. As the nearest inhabited island Pitcairn is over 1200 miles to the west they would have had a pretty long journey. The triangular shaped area that was settled by the Polynesian people is bounded by Easter Island in the east, Hawaii in the north and New Zealand in the west.

Easter Island is famous for the huge stone statues or moai found across the island that were erected on stone platforms called ahus. It's believed the moai represented important chiefs from the different tribes. At a certain point deforestation began to occur on Easter Island. Eventually there were no large trees left on the island at all. This meant that the moai could no longer be easily transported from the quarry to their ahus. More importantly large sea faring canoes could no longer be built, effectively trapping the people on the island. By the time the first Europeans arrived on the island on Easter Sunday 1722, many of the moai had been toppled during warfare between the different clans and the population of the island had fallen to about 3000 from a peak of around 10000.

The Rapanui people did not fare very well in the years after contact with the Europeans. As a result of introduced diseases like smallpox, slave raids and forced immigration by the beginning of the 20th century only about 100 islanders remained.

Today there are nearly four thousand inhabitants on the island, including immigrants from mainland Chile. Most of the Rapanui are of mixed descent but are still proud of their traditions learning to speak the Polynesian Rapanui language as well as Spanish. Tourism has also made many islanders wealthy!

On our first day we went on a tour of the main sights of the island. To start off with we saw some ahus that had been preserved with the moai still toppled over. We then went to the moai quarry which was pretty amazing. You could clearly see the shapes in the cliffs where the moai had been carved out.

The quarry area was littered with moai that had been broken in transit. There were also perfectly formed moai that had been buried in the ground at different heights making the whole area look like a surrealist sculpture garden. The most likely explanation is that by the time these moai were carved there was no longer enough wood to transport them to the ahus so they were buried where they stood.

We then went to visit some restored ahus at Tongariki and Anakena where the moai had been placed back into a standing position. It was quite strange to think that people who lived on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere and didn't even know how to make ceramics had gone to such trouble to make these enormous stone monuments.

During the remaining two days on the Easter Island we saw quite a few more moai. We also climbed to the highest point on the island, at the top of the now extinct Terevaka volcano. The 360 degree view of Easter island surrounded by the sea was very beautiful and confirmed that we were in fact in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

One remaining highlight was the bird man village by the side of the Rano Kau crater.
The village was made up of round stone houses with tiny entrances and turf tops with magnificent views both out to sea and into the volcano crater.

The bird man cult became popular at some point after the toppling of the moai. Chiefs of the different tribes, their representatives and the priests would gather at the village at the beginning of spring. Eventually a representative for each chief would climb down the cliff from the village, swim 2km to a nearby island and wait to find the first egg of the sooty tern. The first to return with a egg (unbroken clearly) would win the competition and his chief would become birdman for the next year.

Since we got back from Easter Island we have been relaxing at Hostal de Sammy in Santiago. The hostel is named after the owner´s dog Sammy who sadly died shortly after the hostel was opened. However, they now have a cute puppy called Sausage who was found abandoned on the street outside. The only problem with the hostel is that the collection of DVDs available to watch is so large and the atmosphere so friendly that it´s hard to actually get around to going out and seeing Santiago.

Tonight we are flying to Auckland in New Zealand. We are now half way through the trip and we both feel quite sad to be leaving South America behind as we´ve had such an excellent time here.