Easter Island is the eastern most island in Polynesia. It is the most remote "inhabited island in the world". Dirt roads, wild horses, moais (the stone statues)that are unfortunately mute. If those statues could talk!! This island is steeped with unknown but there is logical reasoning for why the statues exist and how they were erected all those thousands of years ago. The island is only 15 miles long and 7 miles wide. Today, about 4,500 people live there. They must all live right on top of each other in Rapa Nui, the town, because we drove for miles and never saw houses or people. We saw a few motorcycles, small buses like the one we were on, MANY wild horses, lots of dirt roads, hundreds of Moais in all state of repair, not many people and no cars. They may have cars and I am sure they do but we didn't see any. Didn't see any gas stations either. No pollution for sure. The seas are so rough embarking by tendor that it would make you think there was some force of nature just at the horizon that was causing the waves to be so intense that not many people would attempt to go there. Just looking at the water from the ship it did not look so bad, however, sitting in the tendor, which holds about 150 people, it was a different story. A "pilot" from the island had to get out on the front of the tendor and "guide" us through the water. Why? There are jagged rocks that lay just beneath the surface of the ocean that are waiting there to rip the bottom out of any boat that heads their way! We were lucky to even get to go to the island.
The Moais. All of them face inland as to protect the people there. The one grouping that faces the sea, is thought to be watching the island for intruders, "lookouts".
Easter Island was named by a Dutch explorer named Jacob Roggeveen when he landed here on Easter Sunday in 1722. This explorer found a thriving native population that lived in tight-knit areas. To communicate with each other they created a form of writing called rongo-rongo. The carved messages on boards and the boards have to be rotated in order to read them. Their greastest accomplishment however by far are the moais. They erected these sad eyed statues to honor their ancestors. The moais existed in the thousands when Jacob Roggeveen found this island. Fifty years later when Captain Cook came here, he found only a few hundred people and many of the moais had been knocked over. When a moai falls over, it loses its powers. Over time, with raids on the island to bring natives back to South America as slaves, disease and colonial disenfranchisement further decreased the population of the island. So many people died, that today, there are no longer people that can read the original language that was carved on the rongo-rongo boards. The moais that have coral inserted into those large eye cavities are considered "alive". Actually, they do look like they might talk one day. Hope someone is standing closeby to hear it when they do!! The unbelieveable extremes the people went to to carve these stone moais and the effort it took to erect them is just amazing. The years of carving the months of erecting....do people still work this hard to preserve their heritage and honor their ancestors? The number of men it took to erect one moai ( and remember, there are thousands of them) was over 20. The years to carve, the months to haul the reddish stones from a quarry across the mountain top to provide a "hat" or "hair" for the moais....An incredible feat. For our group, it was taxing just to walk up the mountainside to LOOK at them!! A visit to this place is certainly one that is once in a lifetime. Very happy we were able to do it with the kids. Enjoy the sights. The one photo of a local gal and Kathleen is right after Kathleen bartered 3 oranges she was juggling for a moai keychain!
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