On the 16th we boarded a plane for Easter Island. The Chileans call is Isla de Pascua, while the natives refer to it as Rapa Nui (obligatory wikipedia link, natch). Easter Island is often used as a cautionary tale for rampant development without ecological consideration. It is believed (although contested) that the native islanders deforested the island, leading to the downfall of their civilization. There's actually a Rapa Nui movie, starring Jason Scott Lee and produced by Kevin Costner, set during the civil war that occurred.
If you have an interest in archaeology, then it's a great place to visit. There are all sorts of theories and counter theories about how the Moai (giant stone heads) were constructed, how the island got deforested, what the (now lost) written language means, etc.
If you're just a curious tourist in South America then it's worth a quick visit. Jen and I both think it's worth 2 days.
We spent 4.
The moai are spectacular, especially the incomplete ones at the quarry. There are roughly 1000 of them on the island, of which roughly 800 are incomplete and near the quarry. If you have a mental image of Easter Island, it's probably based on the moai in the quarry.
Here's a couple of pics:
There were some surprises though, at least to me:
If you see a standing moai it's been raised in modern times. When the first Europeans landed on the island all of the moai had been toppled. The iconic images are mostly reconstructions and based on guesses. (NOTE: Wikipedia says that the statues were standing until 1838, and it's probably correct)
The moai actually have full bodies, including arms and legs. It's not easy to see in the pictures, and in the quarry the legs have been buried by sediment over the centuries, but they are complete representations.
The moai are effigies. They represent actual historical people and were constructed on the coastline facing inward. They were put in place to protect the villages. They began small and over time increased in size, to the point that one of the unfinished moai in the quarry is 22 meters tall.
The moai in the quarry were never consecrated and therefore had no power. Consecrated moai were given eyes. I'd never seen a picture of a moai with eyes before, and it just didn't look right to me. My mental image was of these grave, silent heads standing guard. Here's an example:
And here's the requisite man-ox picture:
After the civil war the moai were toppled and a different religion arose. Called the cult of the birdman it was based on an annual ritual where competitors would climb down a cliff, swim to a remote island, and then try to return first with the sooty tern egg from the islet of Motu Nui.
Here's a shot from Orongo looking out to Motu Nui. I've got to believe winning was overrated:
Comments about the island in general:
It's hot. By 10 am all of the clouds are gone and there's no shade (funny thing about deforestation). Our hotel didn't have air conditioning, and heat rage was a big player. I also got to kill several HUGE cockroaches in our room. We could have closed all the windows, but that would have been unbearable.
Credit cards have limited acceptance. The ATM on the island doesn't work with foreign cards other than to do cash advances from MasterCard or Visa. There's a shop that will do a cash advance for you, for a 10% fee. We know this all from painful experience. If you're going, take cash!
The native Rapa Nui believe that they should be a sovereign nation, not under Chilean rule. As we'll learn later (in the Falklands) there are plenty of these types of disputes going on.
If you're going to dive, make sure you ask lots of questions. Don't count on a dive briefing or any sort of instruction. We though we were going to see an underwater moai on a shallow dive. Instead we dropped down to about 100 feet, listening to the divemaster's computer go crazy. Not our favorite dive.
Oh, and don't get excited about the underwater moai, it's fake. We were told it was put there for a TV show, although other sources say it was for the Rapa Nui movie.
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