I've mentioned Bucket Lists before but this place would have to be near the top of mine, if not all of the travellers out there. It have a magical pull about it, whether it's because it is one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth, the fact that it even got settled in a time of amazing voyages or the 'Moai' that scatter the Island. Honestly its a bit of all three. We deliberately left this part of this trip to the end so that we could finish it with a bang. The Island is part of Chile after the Chilean navy sailed out here in 1880's and basically took it. Chile and LAN are therefore the only company that fly here in what is probably one of the longest domestic flights in the world. So what you find on a trip like this are 2 types of people; ones tying to get home and touristy backpackers looking like backpackers. The Terminal is chaotic, one of the worst that we've been to. It is tiny with a small conveyor belt and all 250+ passengers trying to get as close as possible to it to grab they luggage, which then they have to try and manoeuvre through all the other people standing behind them to make there way outside. Luckily by the time ours came out (or by the time we saw it) a lot of people had dispersed and it was relatively easy for us. Next, how to get to the Hotel. Where was the Hotel. Audrey was looking around for a sign showing if someone from our Hotel was there when someone who noticed her confusion asked her if she was OK. He turned out to be a Frenchman living on Easter Island, fell in love with it 26 years earlier and decided to stay. He told her, in French, that he did see them not long ago but they seemed to have left. Nevermind, grab a taxi. We soon found out that everyone knows everyone on the Island as it really is small.
Getting to the Hotel and then unpacking we decided to go for a walk along the foreshore to see our first Moai, a single one on the edge of the small rocky cliff. Before we go any further, I think a quick history lesson is in order. Easter Island was settled anywhere from 800 A.D. - 1200 A.D. (maybe even earlier, around 300 A.D.) by intrepid explorers from the West, the Polynesians that slowly worked their way here by Island hopping over the Pacific, a really phenominal effort when you think about it. Depending on when they got here it was either a quick 100 year progression to the great engineering feat we now call Moai or a slow burn of 500 years, but it is generally agreed that Maoi's were begun in the 1250's. Why built them? Like a lot of things around the entire Earth which we only can guess at what Statues and buildings were built for, the Moai are either Religious or Political. Over the next 300-350 years the Moai were continually built and moved to locations all over the island all emanating from the same location, the quarry at Rano Raraku. In all there have been 887 Moai catalogued of which only 288 actually made it to the designated resting place. Could you imagine if those terrible results were happening in today's society, something would give ... and it did. Around the 1600's the religious thinking changed and the Moai's stopped being constructed. The first visit by Europeans was on Good Friday in 1722. At this time all the Moai's were still standing. By 1826 all but one had been knocked over by the Civil War that ravaged the Island. By 1886 only 1,100 people were still living on Rapa Nui when Chile took over the administration.
What we see today are reconstruction of what was, but it's still great.
We went for a walk around town on the first afternoon just to check it out. There are a couple of famous Moai on the outskirts of town that are perfectly positioned for sunrise photo. So us and all the other Backpackers on the plane settled in and to watch the day disappear.
Next day we hired a car and drove along the Southern Coast to visit all the sites and get up close and personal with these statues. It's all good and great but absolutely nothing compared to the quarry at Rano Raraku. This place is what you come here for. All over the place you find Moai in every state of construction, from Moai that are ready to be transported to ones that are still insitu and looked liked they have just been carved yesterday. It's a great spot for photo's. Just down the road is another famous site, Tongariki, a place where Archeaologists have rebuilt 15 Moai and also the Ahu that they sit on and is the best place to watch the Sunrise from. To finish the day we just drove to the 'Beach' and then across the Island back to the Hotel.
In the morning we went back to Tongariki but we had a terrible Sunrise. But that's OK has it was still a beautiful place to walk around as the day started. After that we stopped at all the sites on the Northern side which included a site that contained Petroglyths. The beach at Anakena is the only safe place to land a canoe and was probably the landing place of the Polynesians and contains another set of Moai that is often photographed. The last set of Moai that we saw were the ones at Akivi, the only ones that face outwards on the Island and are also inland, another unusual thing about this site. Our afternoon was spent at Orongo, on the edge of the Rano Kau Crater. This is were the Make-Make religion grew and developed and is a completely different looking area compared to the other sites around the Island, and honestly for me was something I hadn't read about before.
We had to leave on the next day so we spent it looking around the small town again before flying back to Santiago.
We loved every minute of this trip to Rapa Nui
Getting to the Hotel and then unpacking we decided to go for a walk along the foreshore to see our first Moai, a single one on the edge of the small rocky cliff. Before we go any further, I think a quick history lesson is in order. Easter Island was settled anywhere from 800 A.D. - 1200 A.D. (maybe even earlier, around 300 A.D.) by intrepid explorers from the West, the Polynesians that slowly worked their way here by Island hopping over the Pacific, a really phenominal effort when you think about it. Depending on when they got here it was either a quick 100 year progression to the great engineering feat we now call Moai or a slow burn of 500 years, but it is generally agreed that Maoi's were begun in the 1250's. Why built them? Like a lot of things around the entire Earth which we only can guess at what Statues and buildings were built for, the Moai are either Religious or Political. Over the next 300-350 years the Moai were continually built and moved to locations all over the island all emanating from the same location, the quarry at Rano Raraku. In all there have been 887 Moai catalogued of which only 288 actually made it to the designated resting place. Could you imagine if those terrible results were happening in today's society, something would give ... and it did. Around the 1600's the religious thinking changed and the Moai's stopped being constructed. The first visit by Europeans was on Good Friday in 1722. At this time all the Moai's were still standing. By 1826 all but one had been knocked over by the Civil War that ravaged the Island. By 1886 only 1,100 people were still living on Rapa Nui when Chile took over the administration.
What we see today are reconstruction of what was, but it's still great.
We went for a walk around town on the first afternoon just to check it out. There are a couple of famous Moai on the outskirts of town that are perfectly positioned for sunrise photo. So us and all the other Backpackers on the plane settled in and to watch the day disappear.
Next day we hired a car and drove along the Southern Coast to visit all the sites and get up close and personal with these statues. It's all good and great but absolutely nothing compared to the quarry at Rano Raraku. This place is what you come here for. All over the place you find Moai in every state of construction, from Moai that are ready to be transported to ones that are still insitu and looked liked they have just been carved yesterday. It's a great spot for photo's. Just down the road is another famous site, Tongariki, a place where Archeaologists have rebuilt 15 Moai and also the Ahu that they sit on and is the best place to watch the Sunrise from. To finish the day we just drove to the 'Beach' and then across the Island back to the Hotel.
In the morning we went back to Tongariki but we had a terrible Sunrise. But that's OK has it was still a beautiful place to walk around as the day started. After that we stopped at all the sites on the Northern side which included a site that contained Petroglyths. The beach at Anakena is the only safe place to land a canoe and was probably the landing place of the Polynesians and contains another set of Moai that is often photographed. The last set of Moai that we saw were the ones at Akivi, the only ones that face outwards on the Island and are also inland, another unusual thing about this site. Our afternoon was spent at Orongo, on the edge of the Rano Kau Crater. This is were the Make-Make religion grew and developed and is a completely different looking area compared to the other sites around the Island, and honestly for me was something I hadn't read about before.
We had to leave on the next day so we spent it looking around the small town again before flying back to Santiago.
We loved every minute of this trip to Rapa Nui