Sharing in the Moai Groove

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Chile, Oct - Chile

Warning, this is a long post! We don’t intend to make all of our posts this long, but once I (Lindsey) sat down to write this, the info just started flowing out of me. I have wanted to come to Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, for many years. We are finally here and I’m so excited to share. If you want to skip all of this and just scroll down straight to our highlights and photos, I will never know!

We really are in awe of this magical island. It’s small, easy to get around, and very friendly. There is one small town called Hanga Roa, and not a single traffic light on the entire island. You can drive from one end to the other in only about 20 minutes. We cannot believe we were privileged enough to spend 5 days on the most remote inhabited island on the planet. We do indeed feel quite remote out here, but this island has definitely been touched by the modern world. The girls who manage the guest house where we are staying, who are probably 18-20 years old, love their smart phones and listen to Rihanna and Bruno Mars while gossiping and contemplating how to ditch out on work and take their scooters to the beach. But then again, wild grazing horses and thousand year old rock statues are abundant here.

I used to think this island was a giant mystery with big stone heads popping out of the landscape, believed to be connected somehow with ancient aliens and unknown cults. Although I do love watching Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, especially Georgios and his hair, the TV show was very wrong about Easter Island. Archaeologists have been able to piece together a lot about the history of this island. In fact, the island was never completely abandoned and the history never completely erased from the memories of the indigenous families who have survived.  Even though the indigenous Polynesian Rapi Nui tribe dwindled in numbers over the centuries, their culture is still alive and celebrated on the island.

We have learned a lot about the island throughout our visit, mostly through scoring a phenomenal and scholarly tour guide for a day named Chris. There are also wonderful plaques around the island at most of the historical sites and a small museum with lots of info to take in. If you’re interested in the brief details of the history of Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, and want to know how the stone heads came to be here, then read on my friend. If not, again feel free to skip ahead straight to the highlights and photos.  You can also skip the Lindsey version below and head to Wikipedia for all the specifics.

Without further ado, the Lindsey version…

Well first off, turns out that they aren’t stone heads, but actually statues of full heads and torsos called Moai. There are around 880 Moai statues on the island, ranging in size, but all seem absolutely huge, with the largest being 32 feet tall and weighing in at about 80 tons. European explorers came across this island a few times starting in the 1700s and documented their encounters with natives inhabitants and giant stone statues dotting the landscape. By the 1800s, all reports written about the island indicate that there were no Moai statues left standing, and that all had been toppled over. Any Moai that is standing on the island today is actually a result of reconstruction.

The island of Rapa Nui has been inhabited by Polynesian peoples since sometime around 800 AD. Polynesians were super sea navigators and traditionally explored and settled islands in the South Pacific, like New Zealand, Hawaii, Tahiti, etc. Once the Polynesians reached and settled Rapa Nui, their culture developed similar to other Polynesian islands. The tribes built altars and erected statues on these altars in honor of their great chiefs and rulers who had passed. They lived among these statues in order to accompany their revered ancestors as their souls left the earth, and also to receive mana (good vibes and energy) back from the statues. The oldest statues here are small in comparison to the Moai that the island has become known for, and apparently they are quite similar to those found on other Polynesian islands. Over time, as weather patterns changed and a mini-ice age occurred, exploration by sea became impossible and the Rapa Nui people living on this island became isolated here. During this period of isolation, which lasted until the 1500s, they began to develop their own customs and traditions separate from the rest of Polynesia. Their statues, the Moai, took on a distinct artistic style and their statues became much larger, megalithic. The purpose of the statues remained the same, to honor important rulers and to live symbiotically among them.

The statues were created at a pace of about 2 per year, all carved from the same volcanic rock, at a quarry on the island. How the statues were moved from the quarry to their final destination once completed, is a mystery that remains unsolved. There are a few theories, all requiring the strength of many men and long hours of moving these giant dudes. We visited the quarry, and it was by far my favorite site. There are actually more Moai at the quarry than at any other location on the island. Some were left partially carved and still attached to the bedrock, some were mistakes and thrown aside, some were practice for young apprentices and some even mark grave sites of revered sculptors. There are also 100s of fallen and broken Moai statues, some overgrown with vegetation, along roads from the quarry leading out to ruins of villages across all areas of the island. It is believed that those Moai didn’t make it all the way to where they were headed. Can you imagine being the sculptor who created a statue, working on it for probably almost a year, only to find out your buddies who were transporting it to the final owners dropped it along the way and broke it!

As the population of the island expanded, by the mid 1500s a new religion called the Birdman cult formed and violence broke out on the island. Birdman warriors toppled the Moai belonging to traditional villages and eventually the Birdman cult religion took over the island. They left many petroglyphs as well as ruins that help historians understand the time of the Birdman cult. Unfortunately, the Birdman cult was responsible for the ending of the traditional Moai statue carving.

In the mid 1800s, the native population took a large hit from both the Peruvian slave trade and the disease brought to the island from Europe. Indigenous practices faded away as the population of the island dwindled. The island was annexed by Chile in the 1880s and eventually the history of the island was pieced back together. Most of the archaeological studies here didn’t happen until the 1950s-60s. The first Moai to be resurrected and stood back up in its original place happened in the 1950s. Eventually many more were restored, however, the majority of the Moai on the island remain toppled due to the high cost of reconstruction and the delicate matter of moving religious historical remains. Even though the most striking and photogenic Moai are the ones that are standing, it’s also really neat to see the toppled Moai.  In many of our pictures you will see toppled Moai and Moai faces coming out of rocks.  It’s almost like a where’s Waldo game here.  Is it a rock or is a Moai?

Highlights…

  • Moai, Moai and more Moai. Moai are the giant stone statues found throughout the island. We have spent our days walking and visiting to as many as we can manage. They are enormous and magical.
  • Amazing tour day with Chris, an incredibly knowledgable guide who has literally written forwards to books about Easter Island. We were the youngest people in the tour group of 12. The tour ended with an hour long visit to a perfect beach where we got to swim in the Pacific while looking at Moai on the shore.
  • The quarry where the Moai were carved and then transported from, Rano Raraku. Wow, what a site! It was the busiest place on the island, but for good reason. There is a marked walk around this volcanic crater where we saw Moai who were partially carved into the rock, Moai who were complete but never made it out to other parts of the island, Moai who were mistakes and therefore abandoned, and Moai who were just practice statues for apprentices. There are also Moai buried in the ground up to their shoulders to mark grave sites of famous sculptors.
  • Orongo Crater, an enormous crater with a lagoon in the bottom, formed millions of year ago. Atop the crater there are remnants of a ceremonial village belonging to the Birdman cult who took over the island after the original Polynesian, Moai carving culture faded into the past.
  • Sunsets at Moai sites almost every night
  • 1 sunrise at a Moai site
  • Eating out is really expensive here, so we brought as many groceries from the mainland as we could carry, and did a few small grocery runs on the island, and cooked most of our meals in the shared kitchen at our guest house. But we did treat ourselves to 2 amazing dinners of fresh seafood and local flavor.
  • Hiking a up a volcanic crater with an almost 360 degree view of the ocean, and wild horses grazing right next to us.
  • Made friends with Rocio and her mom, Verónica, who are from Santiago and stayed in the room next to us. Verónica spoke no English, which was a great way for us to really start practicing our Spanish.
  • Francisco, the owner of our guest house, took us and Rocio and Verónica on a tour of a network of massive, underground lava formed caves. The road to the caves is in horrible, rocky condition, and the caves are mostly unmarked, so we needed Francisco’s truck and local’s only knowledge.

Below are a few of our favorite pictures from the island, but you can see all of our pics from Easter Island on Flickr, here.

7 Comments

  1. Wonderful post!! The write-up and photos are incredible. What an amazing experience you are having! Already looking forward to reading and viewing future updates. Cheers! Greg

  2. Love the post–very informative–and the pictures made my eyes pop and imagination run as I’m laying down to go to bed. Sounds like an amazing place.

  3. Wow, so jelly of you two. Amazing images. That camera is really doing you justice. It rained here! Yes, actual, proper rain for the first time on about 6 months, so as you can imagine, californians are very excited. Hasta Luego!

  4. Holy moly!!!! Amazeballs. Love the “Lindsey version”. What an awesome place! Xo

  5. Nancy Davis

    LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this post…. What a fabulous place to visit and. Both info and pics are spectacular. Wish we had gotten there. Keep enjoying your adventure and keep those great blogs coming.. Nothing new here! We’re going to Scranton, PA for the weekend… exciting, huh? But we did rent an apartment in Rome (Trastevere area) for the month of Feb! Have a happy birthday next week. XXX, Aunt Nancy

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