We had seen all the most important archeological sites on the island and gotten an excellent explanation of it all from Christophe, Wikipedia and Steven Fischer (author of the book I read about the island´s history). We had therefore decided to use our last day here on something Iseline had been asking about for a long time: horseriding.

Before I tell you more about the day I would like to tell you just one more cool thing about the Polynesians. Just one more, OK?

The turtle symbolized home for the Polynesians. The reason for this was that they used turtles for navigation. Yes, turtles. Turtles have the same extraordinary navigational capability as pigeons. If you bring a turtle into the vast open ocean, tie a cord to it, and drop it in the water, it will immediately start to swim in the direction of its birthplace. If you remembered the part with the cord you can now drag it back on board and keep it there until the next time you need to know the direction.

Experiments have proven that the earths magnetic field is used by the turtles, but that they also must use other ways of navigating. Turtles which have had a small magnet attached to their head get very disoriented and cannot find the right direction immediately. However they do manage to find their way home in the end, despite the magnet.

We were picked up at 8:40 by the horse owners. On our way over to their farm we also picked up three Americans from New York who would be our companions for the day. They were Margie, her son Daniel and her daughter Katie. Unfortunately none of the photos we took of them during the day were in focus or showed much more than then a few pixels of a face or their backs. Sorry. But they were great people.

We put on our gear and got ready.

Is that a glimpse of Katie? I think so:

Our goal was the Terevaka summit and the islands highest point at 511 meters (1680 feet) altitude. It took us about two hours to get there and we got very good views of the island. Daniel to the right.

Our guides, whose names I have unfortunately forgotten. They were both students studying in Santiago and came home to help the family business during breaks. They were very clear on the fact that they would return to the island when their studies were finished.

Terevaka is the northernmost part of the island. To the south we could see Hanga Roa and most of the island:

There are a few trees here and there on Easter Island:

Our guide told us there is an ongoing project to try to get more trees to grow on the island. He said it´s unfortunately not well run and followed up. The problem is erosion from the common heavy rains here. He said that most planted trees get their roots displaced and die the first rain season after they are planted.

The horses you can see on the picture are “wild”. Horses in general are a starting to become a problem. There are no restrictions on owning and letting horses lose. The result is that most people let their horses roam freely. There are now more horses than people on the island and strictly speaking almost all the horses serve no other purpose than being the pets and property of their owners.

In his book Steven Fischer writes that there is really only one great mystery left on Easter Island, and that is why the Chileans continue to raise cattle there. Two thirds of the island is used to raise cattle. There is no dairy production and the meat is not consumed locally, it´s frozen and transported to Chile. The meat is low quality, since the animals have to walk a lot to get enough food and the whole venture is a money-losing business.

Land-rights has always been a sore issue on the island. Many islanders claim that the Chilean state unlawfully took the land of their ancestors. Not only in terms of colonizing the island, but also in taking land ownership of large parts of the island. Only a few weeks before we arrived there had been clashes and police had fired at demonstrators with rubber bullets. The Chilean state was building a new cultural center on land that some islanders meant they had the right to.

At the top we had a lunch break. I think that is Margie to the far left.

We had our photo taken at the islands highest point. We could see the horizon in all directions.

On the way back Viktor started telling jokes in English. His English has improved dramatically during the voyage. He kept us all entertained for a long time.

It was the first time I have been riding any significant distance. It was a surprise to me how hard it was on the knees. When we got back I could hardly walk.

Our stay on Easter Island was coming to an end. It had been intense and fascinating. We felt privileged to have been able to walk amongst the moai.

Christophe drove us to the airport, He timed it so we would be at the end of the runway when the plane came in from Santiago. We almost missed it and he drove pretty fast to get us there. We jumped out and I got this shot of the 767-300 as it roared past a few meters over our heads:

The waiting hall at the airport is outdoors. Exotic.

Another 6 hours with top-notch airline entertainment

Our flight time was of the non-optimal kind. We left at midnight and arrived in Tahiti at 1am after a 6 hour flight. As opposed to the Chileans the French have done the time zone calculations correctly. Tahiti is GMT -10, while Easter Island is GMT -5.

We had told the kids to try to stay awake. Iseline was the only one who slept, but she slept almost all the way.

Tahiti, homeland of the Polynesians!

These guys made us feel welcome

We all collapsed at the airport motel. Luckily Iseline also managed to sleep. Tomorow we will fly to Tikehau, an atoll and supposedly a Pacific paradise.

Eirik

—–

After a brakfast with baguette, ham, cheese and jam we started our day at 9am again with Cristophe taking us to Orongo.

Orongo was the venue of the tangata-manu, the annual birdman competition. From about 1760 to 1878 Easter Island´s ruler for the next year would be chosen by the man who first could fetch an egg from the sooty tern on an offshore island and bring it back to Orongo.

It is situated next to the crater of one of the three volcanoes on Easter Island. The island is actually the tip of a mountain standing over 2000 meters over the seafloor and was created by 3 different volcanic eruptions. Orongo is on the rim of the Rano Kau volcano at an altitude of over 300 meters.

The boys and I thought this looked more like a real volcano crater than the one at Ranu Raraku where we were yesterday:

The fresh water reeds covering the lake in the crater is the same type of totora which grows in lake Titicaca:

This is one of the reasons why Thor Heyerdahl thought Easter Island had been first populated from South America.  However pollen analysis from sediments have shown that these reeds have grown here for at least the last 30 000 years (well before mankind crossed the Bering Strait to populate the Americas). The major theory today is that seeds were carried from South America in the feathers of migratory birds.

Once we entered Orongo we could see the small island where the birdmen-competitors fetched the egg :

Note the distance down to the water. The competitors had to climb down a 300 meter (1000 feet) cliff before they swam out to the island. Many died, some because they were eaten by sharks. Once on the island they would wait for the first egg to be laid, a waiting period which could last for many days.

You can see a petroglyph on the rock to the left of the center. Here´s a zoomed part of the photo:

This is the birdman. Orongo has more than a thousand petroglyphs. Here is a sketch of the birdman, half bird, half man:

Interestingly enough exactly the same figure can be found in petroglyphs on Hawaii.

Orongo was a sacred village and was only used for a few weeks of the year, during the competition. It consists of 54 huts, one for each clan. The huts are unique and cannot be found anywhere else on the island.

This one has had the roof taken off to show the construction. No mortar or cement was used, just flat rocks piled on top of each other taken from a quarry very close by..

All the entrances are very small. This was a way of making sure enemies could not surprise the inhabitants.

The standing houses have all been reconstructed. Erosion is not kind to flat rocks piled on top of each other. This house has not been reconstructed:

Iseline and a petroglyph:

This is the famous easter bunny petroglyph, which has given the island its name:

Sorry, just kidding, that´s another birdman.

Next stop was Vinapu, a site with a very special ahu

As soon as we saw it both Helene and I exclaimed: “But that looks just like the Inca walls in Cusco.”Thor Heyerdahl had also been to Cusco and this ahu is supposedly the one that started it all. According to Christophe it was here that Thor Heyerdahl got the idea that the ahus and moais could have been built by South Americans.

The technique is impressive, but as opposed to the very hard rock the Incas used the Easter Islanders worked with cheese carving in comparison.

Top-knot:

Different angle:

Notice the number written in white on the pukao. The Chileans declared Easter Island a historic monument in 1935. They made it illegal to remove objects from the island, made an inventory of all “stone monuments” and marked them with numbers. This was a reaction to a Belgian expedition which had loaded an entire moai aboard their ship and sailed away with it. The moai is still today on exposition in a museum in Brussels.

We went back to the bed & breakfast to have lunch and the boys played trampoline football with Christophe´s boys. An extremely sweat-producing sport:

No time to lose, our next stop was Puna Pau, the quarry where all the pukaos were made:

You can see red rock showing through a couple of places.

Pukaos who have been waiting to be transported to their moais for at least 500 years:

Then followed Ahu Akivi, the only ahu where the moais are facing the ocean. There are 7 of them:

Christophe turned out to have a sense of humour not too different from my own. Here is his hand while I am taking a picture of Adrian:

As you can see the moais are looking to the sea. According to oral tradition the 7 represent the 7 scouts who were on boardthe voyaging canoe which first discovered the island. The 7 who went back to Mangareva (probably) and told people there they had found a new land in the east.

However it is very difficult to know for sure if the oral tradition is correct on Easter Island due to the extreme decimation of the population in the 1860s. In December 1862 Peruvian slave traders discovered Easter Island. Through a series of raids they killed or kidnapped 1500 islanders, a very significant portion of the inhabitants, and brought the kidnaped to work as slaves in Peru. When the traders were later forced to return the people to the island by the Peruvian government most of the islanders had already died in mines or during other hard labor. The few who were left were sent back under inhuman conditions. Several died during the voyage and some of those who made it had smallpox. An epidemic broke out and killed more than those who had made it back from slavery. In 1867 an estimated quarter of the remaining population died from smallpox. In an attempt to save the islanders missionaries evacuated most of those who were left in 1871 to the Gambier islands (French Polynesia). They would never return.

Back on the island were a mere 171 people, most of them old men. In 1877 the population hit rock bottom at 111. Only 36 of those 111 ever had children. All native islanders of today are descendants of those 36.

In the slave raids in 1862/63 the entire upper class was wiped out. Obviously with such an extreme loss of people much of Easter Island´s oral tradition and common cultural heritage was lost. Something very important was also lost, the history and decoding of the only known writing system in the Pacific: Rongorongo.

It is still debated wether Rongorongo was invented before contact with the west or not. If it was developed independently it is one of only 3 or 4 times in human history a writing system has been invented independently.

In 1868 the bishop of Tahiti received a gift from catholic converts on Easter Island. It was a line made from human hair, possibly a fishing line. But, most importantly, it was wrapped around a piece of wood with characters engraved in it. The bishop immediately understood the significance and asked the priest on the island to collect as many tablets with inscriptions as he could and also ask the islanders how to read it.

It was too late. Only 6 years before all literate people on Easter Island had been killed or kidnapped by the slave traders. No one was alive who knew the secrets behind Rongorongo and they were lost to mankind forever. Only 4 years before the priest on the island had seen hundreds of tablets with scripts on them, those had now been used for burning, canoe building, etc.

Only 26 tablets with Rongorongo have survived, not a single one of them are today on Easter Island. All attempts to decipher the texts have failed. There simply isn´t enough data left.

Our last goal for the day was the caves at Ana Te Pahu. These caves have been formed by lava flows. Lava has stiffened on the outside but continued to stay melted and run on the inside. When the lava flow has emptied the inside a cave is left, subway tunnel style. The caves at Ane Te Pahu were used by people who fled from the slave traders in the 1860s. They made stone beds, which are still there today, to have something to sleep on.

The lava here flowed about 200 000 years ago. In the lava rock many imprints of large tree trunks have been found, like this one:

There is no doubt, Easter Island was covered with lush jungle for a at least 200 000 years. It took humans about 1000 years to destroy it completely. This is the landscape around the caves today:

No further comments, your honor.

Eirik

—–

After a great breakfast Christophe was ready to give us a full day tour of the island at 9 am. I had chosen Cabanas Christophe because Christophe had a very god reputation on TripAdvisor and because he gave private guided tours in French at an unbeatable price.

Lats night at dinner I had briefed the rest of family about everything I had read from the book “Island at the End of the World.”

Warning: Long explanation about the history of Polynesians and Easter island written by a history nerd follows. If this does not interest you please scroll down to the photo of the red cylindrical stone.

The history of Easter Island is fascinating, but the history of the Polynesians in general even more so. Just like with the Incas I was blown away by the achievements of this very advanced culture. After the introduction to Polynesian history in the book I turned to Wikpedia and Google to learn more.

It all started about 8000-10000 (!) years ago in southern China where a culture established itself. About 6000 years ago a group of them crossed the Taiwan Strait and settled there. About 5000 years ago they started traveling into the Pacific from Taiwan. They are today known as Austronesians. Within the next 2 millennia they spread through the islands of southeast Asia; The Philipines, Indenoesia, Borneo and beyond.

Roughly 3500 years ago a culture now called the Lapita culture appeared in the Bismarck archipelago north of New Guinea. Within as little as 3 to 4 centuries the Lapita culture had spread 6000 km to the east to populate Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. They probably used large ocean-going double-hull canoes with sails, long before other cultures were able to safely cross oceans (possibly with the exception of the Australian aborigines who crossed the Timor Sea at least 40 000 years ago).

Around 2000 years ago the culture known as the Polynesian culture appeared, probably developed from the Lapita culture. This culture continued the movement eastwards, and also expanded to the north and south. It probably had its base around the Society Islands (which includes Tahiti) in today´s French Polynesia.

From here the Polynesians settled the area known as the Polynesian triangle, the largest area settled by any human culture.The Polynesian triangle is defined by it´s three outermost points: New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island. The distance between any two of these points is roughly 8000 km (5000 miles). For comparison Columbus sailed about 5 500 km (3400 miles) when he crossed the Atlantic . Within this vast area the Polynesians established an efficient transport system for cargo and passengers, the so-called Polynesian voyaging sphere, with the “homeland” on or near the Society Islands (possibly Tahiti) as the hub. This network was in operation for almost 500 years, from roughly AD 1000 to AD 1450.

Easter Island  was probably settled around AD 600. When the voyaging sphere was in operation the island was not isolated, it was just the furthest outpost on the transportation network. Using double-hull canoes Easter Islanders could travel to Tahiti and then on to places as far away as Hawaii or New Zealand (NZ was populated around AD 1200, probably as the last uninhabited significant landmass on earth), and they did this long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue (in fourteen hundred and ninety two). We know this as a fact from excavations (objects made in one place found in another), genetic analysis (getting fresh genes was vital for small island populations) and language differences and similarities.

The Polynesians were naturally master navigators, several orders of magnitude more advanced than any of their contemporaries. Navigators were held in very high esteem in Polynesian culture. They used many different data sources such as the stars, ocean currents, ocean temperature variations, wind patterns, cloud formations, wave patterns, algae drift patterns and observing birds in flight.

The stars were the most important tool for Polynesian navigators. They had names for over 150 stars. By memorizing many stars´s positions when they rise and set it is possible to use the rising and setting of stars as a very accurate compass. The angle of descent and ascent of stars can be used to determine latitude.

Polynesians were also experts in finding new islands. A scout canoe would be sent out from a settlement against the wind. It would only contain a few people and plenty of supplies, If nothing was found by the time half the supplies were used, they would return, easily making it back in time using the favorable wind. Observing birds in flight, using wave patterns and drifting algae, they could find a new island as soon as they were roughly 200 km (125 miles) from its coastline.

When a new island was found the scouts would plant crops there to help the first settlers. Then they would note the islands position using the stars before they headed back. Canoes with settlers would then be sent to the new land. Each canoe could hold up to 30 people and the supplies they needed to survive the trip and get started. A single canoe could be enough to settle a new island.

In fact, as a side note, an Austronesian culture also settled on Madagascar around AD 100, probably from Borneo. Madagascar is 7000 km (4350 miles) from Borneo. This speaks loudly about their sea-faring capabilities.

In the 1960s something extraordinary was discovered in Micronesia. On some isolated islands there master navigators still existed who used a technique resembling that of the ancient Polynesians. There were very few of them left.

The Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS) was established in 1973. It works to show that the Polynesians could indeed have maintained their transportation network using the navigation techniques and canoes of the time. They recruited Mau Piailug, the youngest of the remaining Micronesian navigators (in his forties at the time). Mau was chosen by his grandfather to become a navigator when he was 5 years old, when his education started. He had tried to teach his skills to the young in his community, but they were not interested.

The PVS could then with the help of Mau and archaeological knowledge reconstruct the Polynesian navigation system. An ancient navigational system had been documented and saved for humanity in the last moment. Isn´t that fantastic?

In a historic irony the PVS used Thor Heyerdahl´s methods to prove that he was wrong. Heyerdahl did not believe the Polynesians could have navigated large stretches of open ocean. Like most scholars of his time he believed the Polynesians settled the Pacific by accident, by lightweight short-range canoes drifting off course and blown by chance to the next island. He also believed that South Americans first settled on Easter Island and built all the ahus (platforms) and moai (large statues) there. This has now been disproven.

Just like Heyerdahl the PVS constructed an ancient vessel and sailed it to prove it was possible to cross oceans with it.

In 1976 the Hokulea, a replica of a double-hull canoe, left Hawaii and successfully travelled to Tahiti without using any instruments other than the human brain. In 1985-87 the Hokulea sailed from Hawaii and followed 26 000 km  (16000 miles) of traditional Polynesian traveling routes, ultimately reaching New Zealand. On this journey it was proven that it was possible to travel bidirectionally using seasonal changes in wind patterns. Finally, in 1999, they closed the Polynesian triangle by successfully traveling from Hawaii to the Marquesas Islands to Mangareva (Gambier Islands) and then on to Easter Island.

If you want to read more about the Polynesian navigation technique there is an article about it on the pages of the PVS.

Why didn´t they teach us about the Polynesians when I was in school? They were the world´s first culture with technology for efficient ocean-crossing and the farthest spanning culture the earth has ever seen.

Unfortunately the Polynesian culture was also one of exploitation of natural resources. They lived as if there were an infinite supply of new islands with new resources. For many centuries it must have seemed like this was the case. They were lucky enough to start on the western brim of the world´s largest ocean, with a very large number of lush islands, most of them in the most favorable climatic zone available to man. Once they reached the extremes, Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand there were no new islands with new resources to be found. They did, however, also reach South America, probably from Easter Island (Thor Heyerdahl was on to something, he just got the direction wrong) and returned to Polynesia with South American food crops, at least 1000 years ago.

Polynesians hunted dolphins, birds and land-based mammals to local extinction. They depleted fish and other seafood populations. They would cut down forests and burn them faster then they could be replenished. It could take centuries to destroy the flora and fauna of an island, making it difficult for its inhabitants to understand what was going on until was too late,

In many ways the old Polynesian culture is an example of a culture treating the earth like modern society treats the earth today.

No one knows for sure why the Polynesian voyaging sphere collapsed, it was probably a combination of no new islands to be found and depletion of the existing resources on many Polynesian Islands. Why spend energy on traveling and supplying others, when there are little or no supplies to get from them and you have enough worries with surviving on your own island?

For small isolated islands, like Easter Island, the collapse meant that the inhabitants had to get by with the natural resources on their island and consume them in a sustainable manner. They hadn´t managed to do this when the traveling network was operating and nothing seems to have changed when it collapsed.

When Easter Island was discovered by the Polynesians it was completely covered with thick jungle and had a rich ecosystem. It was home to the highest known palm tree, which could reach 30 meters (100 feet). It was also the home of millions of birds, possibly being the richest bird location on earth, since there were no bird predators there.  Its offshore waters were filled with fish and dolphins.

At its height, probably sometime in the 16th century, Easter Island was the home of around 12 000 Polynesians (estimates vary from 7000 to 17000).

By the time the Europeans arrived in the 18th century there was not a single tree over 3 meters (10 feet) left on the island. Dolphins were since long locally extinct (the word for them had been forgotten) and the population was down to about 3000. There was not a single native land animal left that was larger than an insect, everything had been killed and eaten. No mammals (not even bats), no land birds, no snails, no lizards, no amphibians, nothing. The only domesticated animals left were chickens.

Easter Island is a prominent example of how a society can collapse in the highly recommended book Collapse written by Jared Diamond. It gives me shivers to see the parallels to our modern day global society.

Aaaanyway, Cristophe brought us to a number of sites during the day

We went to Vaihu and saw some top-knots. Moai production was done from around AD 1250 to AD 1500. Late in that period moai were given red top stones, known as pukao, probably representing hair tied in a knot:

This next one had the bottom facing upwards. you can se it has a cavity. Each pukao was carved to fit on top of the head of the moai it was meant for. Pukaos are made of red scoria, a very light rock.

When resources started to be scarce on Easter Island wars between clans erupted, They made weapons from obsidian, a rock that can be made very sharp:

We stopped to see the petroglyphs at Papa Vaka:

This is probably a squid:

Next we went to Te Pito Kura

where we saw some toppled moai and several chicken houses. There are many of them on the island. If it hadn´t been for the moai Easter Island might have been known as the chicken house island.

Opening for the chickens:

These constructions were not as much to keep the chickens from running away as they were made to make sure no one would steal the chickens during the night (hens never lay eggs in darkness, so they would come out to do that) As Eastern Island gradually lost it´s food production the fight for survival became fiercer.

We headed over to Anakena, the last native capital of the island, the home to its only decent beach and a great reconstructed ahu with moai. Now we´re talking:

This site was restored in 1980 and contains some of the best preserved moai on the island. This is because they were buried in the sand and thus protected from wind and other erosion.

The artwork is impressive. The Easter Islanders brought with them rock carving as a tradition from other Polynesian islands where many so-called tiki can be found. However tiki seem primitive compared to the artistic quality of the moai (which can only be found on Easter Island).

We had lunch at a local place just next to the site:

The kids enjoyed Anakena beach for a while afterwards:

Next we drove over to Ranu Raraku, the quarry where almost all moai were made. Moai were ordered and created in the quarry while the chief it was going to represent was still alive. The moai would then wait in the quary until the chief was dead and first then would it be transported to its final destination. Of the 887 known moai, 394 are still in the quary. As Easter Island siciety collapsed there were no longer any resources available for, or interest in,  moai transport.

It was a very special feeling to walk among these gigantic “gravestones”. Centuries of erosion and sliding soil have buried the torsos of most of them:

Notice that the eye sockets are not carved out. The eyes, more than anything else, represented the mana (the social and religious power) of the deceased. The eyes were only made after the moai was well in place on its ahu. The eyes were then filled with white corals and obsidian pupils. This was only recently proved and discovered and none of the restored moai have their eyes filled, except one, where the eyes have been painted. It gives an idea of what the moai must have looked like to the Easter Islanders and the impression they must have given:

These majestic statues were a result of years of work and use of then current bleeding-edge technology by order of the ruling class. They must have had a deep impact on common people. It reminds me of the large Cathedrals built in Europe at roughly the same time. They took decades to build and must also have had an immense impact on common people.

We could clearly see where moai had been taken out of the volcanic rock

The quarry looks like it was left in a hurry. There are staues in all different phases of construction.

The tools they used to carve are still lying around:

Carving was done with hand-held rock tools. One of the reason the Easter Islanders could excel in their rock carving was because of the exceptional quality of the rock here. It was soft and easy to carve, yet did not easily brittle.

This is the largest moai in the quary:

It is 21.6 meters (72 feet) tall and weighs about 170 metric tons The largest moai erected was 10 meters (33 feet) tall and weighed 74 tons. With what we know today about their technology it is pretty clear that it would have been impossible to erect this moai with the available work force on the island. Megalomania seems to have reigned. In general moai became taller and taller over the centuries. The 54 different clans on the island were probably engaged in a show-off of power. Hah, you think your 74-ton moai is impressive? Just wait until you see the 170-ton one I have ordered in the quary.

During the moai construction years more and more of the islands resources were used for their production. Intensive agriculture held the system alive for centuries, but as soil erosion caused by deforestation washed more and more fertile soil into the sea the tipping point was reached. Moai would give a clan more mana, and mana would give a better harvest and more food to the clan. There we have that religion thing again. Instead of using their time and energy on maintaining and optimizing their resources the islanders focused more and more on ahu and moai building.

As harvests and food resources in general became scarcer Easter Island society changed dramatically. People started to lose faith in their religion, the priests promised more food, but people got less.

At some point the power balance shifted and the priests, who had ruled the island for centuries, had to leave the power to the military. Easter Island came under military rule by the soldiers of different clans who fought each other intensely over the few resources who were left. Clans winning battles would take what they could immediately use and destroy the rest. They would burn houses and destroy crops and fields, thus further diminishing the scarce resources on the island. The collapse of the island´s society had started.

In the 16th century the new military rulers of the island abandoned the old religion and created a new one which fitted their needs, the so-called make-make cult. This is often how religions have evolved, by fulfilling the needs of the ruling class to control the common people.

Basically the islanders went from a polytheistic (many gods) religion with ancestor worshiping to a pseudo-monothesitic (one god) religion closely related to fertility, spring and migratory seabirds.

After a period with many wars there must have been an understanding that the fighting had to stop. The solution that was introduced seems unique in human history. Once every year a competition was held. A young strong man from each clan entered the birdman competition. The first to swim out to a small uninhabited island off the coast and fetch an egg of a sooty tern, and return it safely to the starting point, would be the birdman and could decide who would be the supreme ruler of the island for the next year. This is probably the only case in history where a political leader was chosen to rule a people based on the results of a sports competition. The birdman solution stopped the worst fighting. Alas, the burning continued. The winning clan would often use its power to plunder and burn the property of others.

When the first Europeans arrived in 1722 there was not a single house left on the island. People lived in caves and small underground shelters.

Back in the quarry I was preparing to take the grand photo of the voyage; the family next to all the moai, when the sky suddenly dumped an unknown, but large, quantity of water on our heads. We had brought rain gear, but had of course left it in the car during the visit in the quarry. There was not even a point in running, we were soaking wet within seconds.

When we reached the car the boys and I told Christophe we really wanted to see the inside of the volcano crater. We didn´t care much if we were wet, it had been warm rain. We climbed up the volcano side

The sign says: “Beware of wild horses” and “No entry without a local guide.”  On the inside there was a lake:

We were a bit disappointed, I guess we had expected something a bit more Lord-of-the-Rings-like. Still it was cool to have been inside a volcano crater.

Next we headed over to what is arguably the best known and most impressive of the reconstructed ahus: Tongariki. I had read about this place with its 15 moai. It was a special feeling to finally be there:

Tongariki was reconstructed by the Japanese Moai Restoration Committee (!) from 1992 to 1996. They were sponsored by a Japase crane company who donated two enormous cranes for lifting the moai. The Chilean government still demanded a heavy import tax on the cranes, which the Japanese refused to pay. This delayed the project by many months.

Even with modern lifting cranes they had problems with the largest moai, which was the heaviest one that had been erected by the islanders, at 86 tons, but prevailed in the end. The plan was also to put in place many pukao (top-knots), but they only succeeded with one. The others are still lying close to the ahu:

After a full day admiring ahus and moai we had dinner at a restaurant run by a French couple. Iseline had a great time with their daughter:

They had real French chocolate mousse! As always I had to sample the local mousse in the name of science:

It was not bad at all.

After dinner there was a traditional Polynesian dance show on the stage in the restaurant

Warning: Tourist photos!

What a day it had been! With the added benefit of the time difference we fell asleep early knowing we had another day of Easter Island discovery ahead of us tomorrow.

Eirik

—–

I woke up at 07:44am when Helene shouted to me that we had overslept. I had been updating the blog until 4:30 in the morning, so it took quite a while to boot my brain. I could not understand how it was possible. The last thing I did before going to bed was to double-check that the alarm on my iPhone was set to 06:30. I knew that Helene had done the same.

Helene had luckily woken up by herself. If the family had been dependent on me waking up like that we would have slept a lot longer.

If there was one flight we couldn´t afford to miss, it was this one. We had checked in yesterday, so our tickets were already used. It was completely impossible to get new tickets now during peak season. And if we did they would cost the annual budget of a small European country.

The flight left at 09:30, boarding at 08:45, in an hour. We were not dressed, had not eaten, I had to dismantle the charging station and we had to pack all the stuff we had gotten out of the luggage last night.

We had very little time.

I spent the first minute double-checking that it was indeed 07:44. The iPhone alarm was still set and the time zone was correct. The only reasonable explanation was a software bug in the Apple alarm code, but that in turn was also highly improbable. Did everyone in the world who used their iPhone as an alarm clock oversleep today? I had no time to ponder any more on the issue.

To work!

We shook the kids and got everyone to get into gear. We all jumped into yesterday´s clothes. I dismantled the charging station in record time with Adrian´s help. Helene got everything in the bathroom. We all zipped tight our backpacks and put on the padlocks. From the first moment of panic and high stress the situation turned into very efficient family cooperation. Like a well oiled machine we got everything ready. After 13 minutes, at 07:57, everything was ready and I could turn around and quickly take this photo.

I didn´t have time to wait for the auto-focus. At 08:00, 16 minutes after waking up, Helene was checking out of the hotel, there was no waiting line.

I hurried over the street to the airport together with the kids. Helene came after us when she had finished checking out. It took some time to find the check-in counter. The flight to Easter Island is a domestic flight, but leaves from the international part of the airport. There was almost no waiting line at check-in. I guess people were either at the airport in time or were sleeping sound because their iPhones malfunctioned. At 08:11 we were handing over our backpacks and got our boarding cards, more than half an hour before boarding. Good margin by my standards. 27 minutes earlier we had all been sound asleep in our hotel beds. Adrian still had his braces retainer on. Extremely close call, indeed.

We even had time to stop at an ATM to get the cash we needed to pay for the bed & breakfast on Easter Island. They do not take credit cards.

We passed by a cool artistic installation at the airport. To me it represented piles of lost luggage:

It was a strange feeling to finally sit on the plane, my adrenaline pump had been running constantly since we got up. We were all exhausted and very hungry. Luckily we had managed to grab some sandwiches from a cafeteria in the airport.

Our plane was another LAN 767-300, like we had from Lima to Buenos Aires. The kids were very happy, they would get almost 6 hours in airline entertainment system heaven.

On the plane I finally managed to finish the book which has become the new reference book on Easter Island, “Island at the End of the World” by Steven Roger Fischer. It was not a very easy read, you have to remember lots and lots of names and terms in Rapa Nui, the Polynesian language spoken on Easter Island. The story is completely fascinating, though. A hundred years ago Easter Island was probably the least understood of the Polynesian islands in terms of history. Thanks to a lot of interest and hard work from archeologists, linguists, geneticists and anthropologists it is today probably the island we know most about.

At last, we were on Easter Island. For me, an old dream come true. Iseline was not in the mood for being photographed after a 6 hour flight.

We were met by our host, Christophe. He is French and he runs a little bed & breakfast together with his Easter Island wife. He came here over 14 years ago after having done French military service in Tahiti.

Hey, could I get some smiles, please?

The bed & breakfast (or pension, as the French call it) “Cabanas Christophe” was perfect for us. The garden was lovely and there was a trampoline. The kids did not waste much time:

We rented their family unit with one room for the kids:

one room for me and Helene:

and a living room:

plus a kitchen:

There was also a great porch:

There was wifi in the air, but the capacity of the connection left much to be desired. Updating the blog was completely out of the question. Christophe explained that all internet and phone communication to and from the island went through one single sattelite dish.

I did a search for “iPhone alarm” on Google News. Wow! Up popped a gazillion articles about how people all over the world had overslept because of a bug in the alarm application on the iPhone. It wasn´t our fault after all, it was Apple´s! For some very strange reason the alarm would not work for the first two days of 2011. It was the little brother of the year-2000-bug,

I started to imagine the massive amounts of law suits Apple might have to deal with in the US. What an embarrassment for a company that prides itself in having more stable and bug-free software than the competition.

Christophe was an excptional host. He was a walking encyclopedia on the history of the island, completely service-minded and fantastic with the kids.

After we had unpacked and rested a bit he drove us into town to a restaurant.

They made us try on some funny hats:

Iseline was cold and borrowed Helene´s shirt. With the hat she turned into a scarecrow:

Easter Island is a part of Chile and, except for fish and some vegetables, all food on Easter Island is brought in from Chile via boat or plane. Today there are about 6 supply ship arrivals per year. Not too long ago there was only one per year and the Chileans weren´t always very punctual. The supply ship could be several months late and the islanders would suffer as they ran out of gas for cooking, flour, cooking oil and lots of other stuff.

The airport has changed life on the island in many ways. In the 1970s there were weekly flights to Santiago. Today there are daily flights. There is a thriving tourist industry on the island and the whole economy is based on tourism. Many other pacific islands are financially dependent on using natural resources, through e.g. mining or agriculture and have a challenge with young people leaving to live and seek careers elsewhere. On Easter Island this is less of a problem, as it is possible to pursue a career on the island. The tourist industry is very much run by the Polynesians and a career path here can be driver to vehicle owner to tourist guide to owner of a tourist business.

There is still no deep water port on Easter Island. All large ships have to anchor offshore and everything brought in by small boats. This can be a very hazardous operation. There is no coral reef or other protection from the harsh ocean around the island. Sometimes supply ships have to wait for many days before offloading is possible. Oil and gasoline are stored in several very large white storage tanks. They are very visible and Christophe called them the modern day Easter Island statues. There is an elaborate system with flexible underwater pipes connected to buoys. When a tank ship arrives air is pumped into the buoys attached the ends of the pipes at the ocean floor. The pipes then float up and can be caught and attached to the ship. Once pumping into the tanks is finished the pipes are lowered again. All electricity on the island is generated by a diesel operated power plant. With the constant strong wind and hot sun on the island it is a pity they have not tried to harness these renewable energy resources.

Prices on the island are hefty since everything needs to transported so far. Can you imagine the price levels in Maine in the US if everything, literally everything, you can buy in a store had to be brought over from Ireland? That´s roughly how far away Chile is.

Easter island is the most isolated place in the world. The closest habitable islands are the Pitcairn islands, 1800 kilometers (1100 miles) to the west.

After dinner we stopped by an ice-cream place Christophe had recommended. It was the most expensive ice-cream we have ever bought, but we could not complain about the size of the portions:

We walked through Hanga Roa, the capital of Easter Island. More or less the entire population of roughly 3000 people live here:

We followed the coast and slowly made our way back again. We passed by a Polynesian Easter Island flag. For many years it was forbidden and the by law the chilean flag was the only flag which could wave on the island:

There were some big, big waves coming in and we spent a long time just watching them. The rocks in the foreground are taller than I am, the waves must have been at least 5 meters (16 feet) tall:

The waves came in waves and when the ocean was a bit calm we would wait for the next wave of waves:

We stumbled onto our first ahu and moai, the constructions that have made Easter Island world famous There was a sign. The whole island is peppered with archeological sites and everything is very well kept and marked:

An ahu is a platform. A moai is a statue and it is placed on an ahu.

Ahus are in fact graves and were always placed close to the ocean. The ashes of dead important people were placed in the ahu. A moai was erected to represent and preserve the mana of the deceased. Mana was, more or less, the social and religious power of the deceased. Mana was the life force in the universe and mana could be used to create favorable weather, good harvests, good health, you name it. In short mana was a bit like the force in Star Wars.

The moai channeled the mana so it could be used to protect the local village even after death. This is why, with one exception, all moais are faced with their faces inland, towards what was a village.

There has been much debate over how exactly the Polynesians managed to transport and erect the moais. They weigh many tons (the heaviest erected weighs 86 metric tons) and some of them were placed 12 km (7 1/2 miles) from the quarry. They were probably transported on “roads” made by tree logs. The major theory for erecting them is that they were lifted by wooden levers and rocks were gradually put under them. The rocks would eventually form a hill suporting the moai until it stood upright. The hill was then removed and used to construct the wings of the ahu around the statue. This theory is supported by the fact that the volume of the mass used to make the ahus always correspond roughly to the mass necessary to build such a hill.

There was a toppled moai close to the ahu You can see parts of the ahu structure and the standing moai in the background:

By the mid 18-hundreds all moai on Easter Island had been toppled by the islanders themselves after a series of wars. All the standing moai today have been re-erected in modern times.The moai represented mana and the winner of a battle would always try to topple the moai of their enemies, so they would have less protection from them. Often boulders were deliberately placed so the moai would be decapitated when it fell, like the one on the picture above.

The moais were built in the period from AD 1250 to AD 1500.

The ahus and moais have made Easter Island famous and tourism here has exploded. LAN Chile has a monpoly on flying to Easter Island and has steadily increased the number of flights. Now there is at least one flight per day from Santiago. Very recently they have also opened a route from Lima.

10 years ago there were 8000 tourists per year on the island. Now there are more than 60000!  This has also meant that conservation has become increasingly important. It is strictly forbidden to walk on an ahu or touch a moai and these laws are policed. If you touch a moai you might be photographed by a civilian policeman and fined a very large sum.

A Finn actually tore off the ear of a moai a few years ago by hammering on it with a rock. He was caught and told the police he wanted a souvenir. He was heavily fined and deported.

We found a playground close to the bed & breakfast:

The sun set around 9:30 pm.

The time zone here is only 2 hours before Chile, probably to make the transition from Chile as easy as possible, but it skews the time of sunrise and sunset. I checked the GPS position and calculated. Easter Island time is almost 2 1/2 hours after solar time. This means the sun will be at its highest at about 2:30 pm tomorrow. Good to know in terms of heat and sunscreen planning.

Tomorrow Christophe is going to start showing us around the island. We are very much looking forward to that.

Eirik

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