Easter Island - not just an ugly face -scenery too

  Raiatea, French Polynesia
Friday, December 26, 2003

Tues 16th Dec Vina del Mar
Day of getting organised for rest of trip. Check out the centre of town that guide said was not too good at night. Looks fine in daytime, but defiinitely more down-market than our end. Got another high-speed minibus to the Lan Chile office at the far end of Valparaiso, where we confirm our flights, then get Artilleria ascensor up to the Naval Museum and viewpoint. Once again, it's like another, tranquil, world up at this level. The afternoon breeze hasn't arrived yet, so the water is very calm, with a lovely blue-green colour rather than the grey it gets when it's windy. View from here was mainly over the port. Walk up past the University, and up various steep hills looking for good viewing spots. Stop for another great cherry purchase. See a Green Bus, and decide to hop on. Don't see a lot, but have a great, very fast rollercoaster ride up and down lots of steep streets. Very pleased we're not walking them. Comes down beyond the port area, and back to the centre of town, passing a good beach, with people actually swimming, on the way.
Get dropped off in centre of town, and spend some time finding internet place that will cut a CD for us. Eventually find one, and upload travelpod at the same time. Then spend quite a bit of time near the bus station, trying to find a bookshop, shown in our guide, which sells second-hand books, as we've run out of reading matter. No luck. This area of town looks fairly depressed, but opposite us is an enormous modern National Congress Building, looking somewhat out of place. Buy even more cherries, as well as apricots and nectarines (we're really going to miss the fruit). Buy some pharmaceutical supplies, and then a bag to carry all our purchases. Get bus back most of way to our room. Out later to ring the kids and email. There is a heavy smoke haze hanging over the town, and the news is full of bushfires in the area, and houses being burned. The temperature today was 34 degrees - to think we were complaining about the rain and cloud a couple of days ago.
Dinner consists of fruit, and bread and vegemite and peanut butter. Walking 8.5 kms
Now that we're leaving the South American mainland, just a few impressions we've got of Chile and Argentina -
They are both very much first world countries - everything works, and is done properly. This is noticeable in a thousand small ways, and ranges from plumbing in bathrooms, through to ticketing of buses and having baggage tickets. There is a definite law and order, but not a heavy police presence, and no real slum areas like in other South American countries. One third-world practice, however, is the placing of used toilet paper in the garbage, rather than in the toilet. Also there is a real dog problem - there are lots of them, and they are allowed to wander the streets, and they tend to form packs, even in the middle of towns.
There is a definite middle-class, but the housing is definitely smaller than similar in Australia. In the outskirts of towns in Chile, in particular, there were whole suburbs of small, very basic houses lined up row after row. We've been surprised how cheap it has been to travel, apart from major world-class tourist sites.

Wed 17th Dec Vina del Mar-Easter Island (Chile)
Get 10.30 bus back to Santiago. Do some internetting to pass the time, have a quick lunch, then get 3pm bus to airport for our flight to Easter Island.
At the airport we're surprised to find that we are using the domestic terminal, and thus doing our final migration checks at Easter Island. Some others from another lounge join us, maybe from transit. There is no duty free, and the liquor prices in the terminal shops are outrageous.
The plane is pretty full. We are hard up against the bulkhead as usual, with the families. One couple has a family, with four young children, in their seats, and they are pedaling hard to get upgraded to first, but eventually get sent down the back. Some ankle biter sized boys are running riot, including up into first class most of the flight. The first class loos are being used with impunity by the family types. We fly over Robinson Crusoe island, but can't see it.
It is still light when we get to Easter Island and we get a good look, overflying from East to West, then swinging out to sea, to come in very low compared with the island cliffs, but the airstrip is in a notch cut between the volcano in the west, and hills to the east.


There are no formalities, and Dianne checks out the booths in the luggage area for our preferred accommodation place (from the Lonely Planet thorntree website), but finally find that the lower cost places have their representatives outside. Settle for Angelica's, having kept a low profile to avoid the one who has our name, given to her by her "brother" in Santiago airport..
There is an English girl, Amy, also going to Angelica's, and we wait with her till Angelica has checked the last of the prospective customers. A girl, possibly from the tourist bureau, did the rounds with a clipboard, making sure everyone had accommodation of some sort.
Back to Angelica's in a taxi truck. Not too impressed with the state of disarray of the main house, and less so when taken around the side in the dark, but come to the two new accommodation blocks -each with two large rooms with their own bathrooms and a small verandah in the middle. The bed is not made, and looks like we will be doing a hot change, but get clean sheets and a made bed while talking to our English neighbours. Later talk at some length with the other English neighbours and Amy, the twenty-five year old English girl. She's on her first overseas trip, and has just spent three months teaching English in a small Chilean village. She paid a lot of money to some organisation - the .....??? Challenge, for the privilege. She's travelling for a while, then doing the same in Nepal. There is also a Dutch couple in a tent on the lawn. We discuss the possibility of sharing a hire car with Amy, then have a hot shower and to bed.
Thursday 18 December Easter Island (Chile)
Woken by chooks, and share a 9am breakfast with Amy, who joins us on our exploration of Hanga Roa, which is the capital of the island and the main town, with a population of 4,000. Easter Island is just south of the Tropic of Capricorn, and 3,790 kms west of Chile, and 4,050 east of Tahiti. Its nearest neighbour is Pitcairn Island. The first inhabitants date from the 4th century A.D. A culture dedicated to the construction of altars and the carving of monuments developed, and it is these statues (moais) for which Easter Island is famous. Between the 16th and 17th centuries, wars among the tribes brought an end to this culture. On the island there are 887 moai - of these 288 are moved to and erected on an ahu (platform), 397 are still at Rano Raraku quarry, and 92 are on route to an ahu. The average moai was 4.05 metres high and weighed 12.5 tons. The biggest moai is still in the quarry - called "The Giant ", it is 21.6 metres high and weighs between 160 and 182 metric tons. The biggest erected moai is on Ahu Te Pito Kura, and is 9.8 metres high, and weighs about 74 metric tons.
Our accommodation is at least 2 km from the town centre, so we do plenty of walking. Check out the markets, car hire prices, then the boat harbour, tracking down fresh bread by the smell on the way. The coastline is very rugged and beautiful, with a lava coastline, dikes running out to sea like natural breakwaters, and large waves breaking. We walk a couple of kms north along the coast, past sculpture parks, a natural swimming pool, and our first two archaeological sites, including a statue (moai) with eyes made of coral for the white part and obsidian for the pupil, and a topknot, with the eyes forlornly upcast like a Leunig character. These eyes were added in the restoration in 1978. We take the first of many photos, then head back to Angelica's for a rest and lunch.
After lunch we walked with Amy down to the end of the airport runway and west along the rugged coastline to find the lava tube sea caves. The largest of the caves is open to the sea, and can be inspected from the end of the lava peninsular, while the smaller (Ana Kai Tangata - Ana = cave; kai = food, Tangata = man) is accessible from a steep path. It has some vague cave paintings of birds on the ceiling. The tourist guide book says "The human remains that were found show that Rapa Nui people were antropophagous in the epochs of Rapa Nui decadence and tribal fights". Think this is a polite way of saying they were cannibals.
We then walk till we can see the full length of the rocky beach and steep headland to the west, then back through the grounds of the flash Iorana Hotel, to the commercial harbour, which services the container barges used to unload ships. There are two older barges each with two very big outboards, which look abandoned, and two newer barges, each with a diesel/ hydraulic drive large propeller outboard. There is also a smaller boat harbour with fibreglass longboats, and a local young man assembling a high-tech one man outrigger canoe.. We then walk around the shore, past another large hotel and up a new road past the Cultural centre to the main road, and down to the Te Moana restaurant, which had been recommended the night before.
Amy was trying to economise, but decided to lash out on a chicken curry, while we had a very big two person fish and chop suey plate, with A$5 each mixed juices. During and after the meal we talked to Sjirk and Thyna (the Dutch/Scottish-Kiwi couple who were trying for first class on the plane) Did a lot of reminiscing of old-time travelling experiences (he went overland from Istanbul by public transport in 1974, and we did the same trip in 1977).
To bed about 12 local time after agreeing to do a joint car hire, with Amy, tomorrow at 10 am.
Friday 19 December Easter Island (Chile)
Late breakfast. Tell Angelica we need a car for 10 am. Try for a better deal than 25,000 pesos per day if we take 2 days, but this doesn't get a lower price, but does indicate we will take 2 days. When the man arrives, price seems high in $US, but OK at 27,000 pesos, for one day, extendable to two if we change our mind. Murray signs his life away for no insurance, no third party (the norm on Easter Island), cash on the barrelhead. At least we don't have to give a credit card. Inspect our old style, but immaculately restored and painted Suzuki Samurai. Take photos of the broken lights, then drive up the deserted road as far as the end of the airport to get the feel of it, then down to get the recommended 10 litres of fuel for 3720 pesos. Into town for film and bread, then out past the airport, continuing on the dirt road to the oil terminal, and right toward Ahu Vinapu. For better or worse we missed the tight U-turn required, and ended up on the road up the west side of the airport, and up the slope of Rano Kau Volcano, stopping halfway for wild guavas. Stop at viewpoint which allows you to look right down into the Crater, which has a lake more than one kilometre in diameter. On its surface there are a lot of bulrushes and other vegetation which form floating islands which can support the weight of a man. The water looks very shallow, however it has been proved to be more than 280 metres in depth. Take great photos of the wonderful views, then continue on to the National Park office . Pay 5000 each entry, which was for the whole island. From here there are magnificent views of most of the island, including the beautiful islets Motu Nui, Motu Iti and Motu Kau Kau.


This is the site of Orongo, the ceremonial village, the remains of which are still here. From here the Rapa Nui people used to watch for the migratory arrival of the manutara birds (sooty terns) which nest on the islets, as part of the Birdman cult, which replaced the original way the five clans of the island demonstrated their strength - by erecting complex monuments with moai. The central feature of the Birdman cult was an annual ceremony where the heads of each clan raced to the islets to obtain the first egg of the sooty tern. The winning chief was named Bird Man ((Tangata Manu) for the following year. It appears that the egg represented fertility to the cult.
On the way back past the oil terminal we see the sign to Ahu Vinapu, which we missed on the way up, so drive down to it. The first site, Ahu Tahiri, has special significance, since the carving of the stone walls is similar to those in Machu Pichu. The walls are indeed put together with Inca-like precision, but this is possibly not all that significant, as this is the only way you can put a good wall together with limited tools. The second site, Ahu Vinapu, is harder to find, and involves a stroll through the luxuriant Scotch Thistles. All the moai are fallen, and spread around.
There are good views along the South East coast and we can see all the way to the east end of the island. We stop at all the sites, meeting the English couple from the Hostal at various places, and use up a lot of time, so have a banana sandwich lunch on the go, instead of our planned picnic.
The quarry for the moai, Rano Raraku, is on the slopes of a crater with a vertical fracture on the south side, rather than a hole in the ground, and you can see the standing, half buried moai from a long way off. This is probably the most impressive site on the island, a combination of geography, authenticity, and sheer scope of the operation.


We climb the south end, checking out the man-made cave with several horizontal moai half liberated from the rock, then walk north around the outside slope of the crater, past standing moai to the rim. We are surprised to find a lake with very high bulrushes, and a herd of horses, as well as a lot more standing and lying moai. There is a path all the way along the inside of the crater to a notch at the rim, so we decide to go back this way. The path ends in a vertical cliff, with good views down to the Polynesian First 15 ( our name for Tongariki, where they have restored, and stood up, fifteen statues), and the end of the island. There is a path to the top, but it is too steep and rough for sandals, so retrace most of the path then up over the rim and back on the high path to the south end.
The next stop is the Polynesian First 15 - 15 moai all in a row, but for some reason it looks a bit overdone - too crowded and too much restoration. However, the view past them to the steep end of the island is impressive.


There is a moai being built from scratch under a shade structure, using an angle grinder and a sharp axe.
After this we hot foot it to Anakena Beach, with one side trip to Ovahe, the pink beach, to catch it with the sun on it. Get to Anakena Beach, and can't believe how beautiful it is - you see a lot of publicity about Easter Island and the moai, but have heard nothing about beautiful beaches, and wonderful scenery. It's a lovely white sand beach, with palm trees.


The parking area is pretty full, and there are a lot of people in the water and on the sand. There is a grassy picnic area shaded by palms, and a toilet and change block. Dianne and Amy start off by sitting in the partial shade of a sand bank, but it is too hot, so we head for the few palm trees near the water, to share the shade with a German couple, who leave their bags and go swimming. Next thing, a woman with a kid and all the gear that goes with it moves in to take most of the remaining shade. The water isn't too cold, and Amy has a long swim (we don't as still recovering from our flu), then we head back to the car.
Murray takes a short walk further along the coast to see if there is a defined walking path, as shown on the map, as we are deciding whether to get a taxi here tomorrow to do the walk. The walking path is pretty indistinct, but there is a vehicle track which continues out of sight.
We head back the way we came looking for the "navel of the world" site, which takes a bit of finding, as it is a surprisingly small oblate sphere, quite smooth, maybe 60 cm diameter, with four smaller spheres around it, all enclosed by a low wall. and down in a hollow right beside the sea. From here we double back to the main road down the centre of the island, which passes through green pasture land between low rounded hills and grassy volcanic cones. At first there are good views back towards the quarry, the East Cape, and the "First Fifteen".
It is getting late, but we make a group decision to take the turnoff toward the central Ahu Akivi site, with seven moai which were restored in 1960-1, to watch the sunset. These are the only seaward facing moai, but being in the centre of the island, they don't have a lot of choice. The sunset is a bit of a fizzer, with cloud right on the horizon preventing a view of the sun and not allowing the closer clouds to light up.
In another group decision, we try to find the mysterious road down the centre that the Dutch couple had trouble finding yesterday, but keep heading too far north, passing the turnoff to Te Pahu cave. At this stage, it is obvious we are on the loop which takes us along the coast, but it is coming on dark, and the petrol gauge has suddenly dropped alarmingly. As we had often smelt petrol, thought it possible we had punched a hole in the tank, or dislodged a hose, so turned around, as we found later, just short of the Ahu Te Peu, and the turn onto the coast. On the return journey, the petrol situation doesn't get any worse, and we feel confident enough to take the (uninsured) car down the main street for another meal at the Te Moana restaurant, being more circumspect this time, and splitting a giant club sandwich and having beer/coke. The restaurant was crowded as usual, and we were wedged in between a tree with giant speakers on it, and a bunch of tourists, and we extracted ourselves with difficulty to get the car and head home, ostensibly by the quick, quiet route past the church, which led us on a merry chase all around the town until we saw the Norfolk pine hung with christmas lights, which we knew was near home.
Back at the ranch, we discovered that in the effort to extract ourselves from the restaurant, we had left Dianne's daypack behind. Panic stations! Back at the restaurant we found that someone had picked it up and placed it on a seat. Much relief, even though the valuable items were not in it.
Saturday 20th December Easter Island (Chile)
Out early to see Dos Ventanas Caves before we have to have the car back by 10.30am. After we pick up another 5 litres of petrol, and a camera battery for Amy, we headed north from the end of the main street, through smaller streets, guessing our way until we came to the Museum and the coast road. As the Dutch couple could not find the cave yesterday, Angelica had given Amy written and drawn instructions, plus a photo album to guide us, and we still nearly missed it, as there were no signs, and the islets used for a reference looked just like a point from the road, and the distinctive vertical rock may have been on the section of protective wall knocked down to allow the road to continue. However, we had a good look at the coast and the islets, and a lot of walls and cairns which looked man-made, before Dianne found the cave entrance in a depression in the ground, almost beside the car. Looked more like recent roadworks, than a cave entrance.
The entrance was made of a cut rock shaft, 2 metres deep, with the top metre below natural ground in the depression. At the bottom of the hole a tunnel of almost head-height led off toward the coast. There was only a short section of complete darkness before you could see light from the windows, but the rough path and uneven ceiling would have been rough going without a torch. The cave was maybe 4 metres wide and 2 metres high in the main section, with a damp earth floor. The windows looked like they had been enlarged and squared off, and looked out onto a 20 metre drop to the waves below.


The cave floor was typical of occupied caves everywhere, with hundreds of years of occupation, and no attempt to remove the obstacles from the floor.
We headed east up the coast on a fair road to the turn at Ahu Te Peu, where there was a barely recognisable platform, and a two wheelmark track continuing east. Not far from here, we came to the limit of the previous day's travel, and the Te Pahu cave. The map shows it a long way from the road, when, in fact, it is only 50 metres.
The cave is a partially collapsed lava tube, with an original diameter of 15 to 20 metres, now filled with rubble and mud to give a 2 to 4 metre ceiling height.
At the entrance, a 30 x 10 metre section is open to the sky, and is planted with banana trees as per the Rapa Nui agricultural practice of creating a microclimate, by digging a hole if necessary.
We return by the coast, stopping for bread on the way, and returning in time for the 10.30 car-return deadline. It takes a while for the car to be collected, and we have to make sure everyone knows we don't want it for a second day. We get our breakfast coffee in time for lunch, then walk to the harbour and swimming pool. Later joined by Amy. Observe some weird disinfecting ritual around the boat which was taking fuel to the monster new ketch anchored offshore. It looked a lot like the sailing ship " Kokomo" we saw in Sydney. Later we walked to the Ahu Tahai complex again to look at the sunset and take photos - a better sunset today, and a flash yacht for the foreground.


Then walked back to the other restaurant closer to home for a very ordinary club sandwich and cheesy chips. Sat next to the team from the night before, who were the ones who put our daypack on the seat for us.
Sun 21st Dec Easter Island - Tahiti (French Polynesia)
We finally leave without breakfast, after all waiting around for quite a while as Angelica has gone off to buy the ingredients. Amy arranges for us to get a lift to the museum with Rich, the red headed Englishman, and his wife. They are going to attempt to see the rest of the island today, including driving the dotted track along the NE coast, and finding the window cave with our directions. They drop us at the museum just before noon, giving us 30 minutes to look at it, but at first look, the office is closed, half an hour early. However, the museum on the next level is still open, and we pay our money, get a translation booklet and culture vulture for half an hour until we are kicked out. Probably enough time without really getting into it for hours. Keep running into the Dutch/Scottish-Kiwi couple, and they give us their address in Scotland.
Walk back to town, checking out the snorkelling trip for Amy, and getting more bread and a slice of lemon meringue pie, then up to the Market Artesanal for Amy to buy souvenirs. We leave her there and head back to the hostal, where we get a late breakfast coffee, and hole up for the afternoon while it blows and rains hard. Angelica, when asked about the late checkout situation says we can use our rooms till we leave (7pm) - "where else could you go?" - wished everyone thought the same way. This explains why the room wasn't made up when we arrived.
Pack our gear and get organised, then get a taxi with Amy down to the airport. The taxi man is in a hurry, and probably thinks it is a short fare, but Amy is carrying 25 kg in a Macpack with an attached piggyback pack, and we have a fair bit of weight with our Tahiti supplies.
We book in, then look for way of getting rid of our excess pesos, but end up hanging onto them. We hold onto Amy's Chilean wine while she goes back to bid Angelica farewell. Angelica comes through customs to say goodbye, and gives us a shell garland each.
When the plane comes in, we see the Kiwi couple who were on the Navimag boat from Puerto Natales and talk a while. The plane isn't nearly full, with one person on most of the triple centre seats, and us with a double each. We don't see much of the island on the way out, as now 9.30pm, but see Moorea on the way in. Some sort of medical emergency halfway, involving a teenage girl, otherwise, apart from a little turbulence, an incident free flight of about 5 and a half hours, and a four-hour time change. Get into Papeete about 11.30pm local time. Neither get much sleep on the plane.
It takes forever to get through immigration, as we are well down the plane, and second last through, but no hassles either with where we are staying, or what we are carrying. No interest shown in our return ticket. We must be respectable nowadays.
There are no working ATM's in the terminal, and note converter has a very savage minimum fee, so don't get any local currency. Suss out Air Tahiti, but told office doesn't open till 5am, so settle down on the floor near the Air Tahiti domestic check-in to wait for our 7am flight. Have a very ordinary night's lying down, with some sleep, in 28 degree, high humidity weather, with our large Polynesian lady neighbour snoring loudly. It is quite normal for people to sleep in this airport (and there are quite a few doing so today) as Le Truck doesn't run in the early hours, and taxis and accommodation are prohibitively expensive.