A Heady Atmosphere
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
47
97
Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
Loading Map
Hanga Roa, Easter Island,
Chile
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Unfortunately it was not to be.
The tall French people who were due to be Jacob's travelling companions for our journey to Easter Island didn't really want to relinquish their leg room. Understandable, but still disappointing. This is the first flight since we began our journey which we didn't spend sitting together.
Oh well. We immersed ourselves into the in-flight films and the journey passed fairly quickly without much of note to write about. As we arrived into Hanga Roa, the main (and indeed only) town on the island, we were somehow very pleased that our disembarkation was through the medium of wheely steps, not one of those tunnel things. It felt a bit more appropriate to the humid, palm treed, pointy volcanic south-sea island surroundings.
In the terminal building, a pretty young thing sashayed over to us and draped garlands of flowers round our necks. This was Jessica, from the campsite we had booked into. Kirsty rolled her eyes at Jacob's jokes about getting
lei-d, which don't translate very well when written down. They weren't that great when spoken.
Our bags collected from the conveyor belt thing upon which a customs dog was doing an odd little treading-water kind of dance, we were taken to our campsite in a pickup truck, and after being shown around the communal kitchen and suchlike, led to our tent. We hadn't really known what to expect when we arranged a place to stay on a campsite including tent hire (easily the cheapest accommodation on the island), but neither of us had really expected a small, old, two man backpacking tent. Never mind, it was only ever intended as a place to sleep, and in that regard, it was fine.
It was also fine as a place to live, forage and crawl for hundreds of ants, who made their way happily in and out through the ripped seams at each corner of the tent. Situated on a rocky promontory with spectacular coastal views, the campsite has absolutely no cover for any of its tents, and as such, they cook and go crispy and brittle in the relentless tropical sun. This has the useful side effect of providing campers with a thermal alarm clock, as it's not really possible to stay in the tents themselves after dawn without burning to a crisp.
The long-term stretched-out pitching of a tent in such a place means the stressed seams at the corners break down, and the ants, of whom there are millions on Easter Island, use the resultant holes as a handy form of ingress. The morning, which we had intended to use for exploration of Hanga Roa and environs, was in fact spent converting the formicarium back into a dwelling for humans.
We emptied the tent, piling everything onto the airbed, and Kirsty used the suspicious looking cover from the suspicious looking foam mattress with which we had also been supplied as a large sweeping utensil to evict the ants and other assorted flora and fauna from our tent. Whilst she systematically went through the inside of the tent, Jacob went round the outside, sealing up the holes with the gaffer tape from his trusty bag of useful things without which he never goes travelling.
The tent rendered ant free and ant proof, a final check was done, and a bit more gaffer tape applied to bits of the groundsheet which were looking a bit thin. Our belongings and the airbed were each liberally beaten and shaken to remove any squatters, and replaced into the tent, which was quickly zipped up. We are pleased to report that no more than about a dozen ants were sighted inside for the remainder of our stay.
The morning having been spent engaged in the process of zoological exile, we eventually wandered out into Hanga Roa for a look around. We knew, as most people who have heard of Easter Island do, that there are some large, imposing, unmistakable statues to be seen. We didn't know that they are all over the place, in the town centre, right by the harbour. When taking photos of the first of these 'moai', we had to be careful with the framing so as not to include the telegraph pole next to it.
We had imagined that there were a few sites where they could be seen, a long way out of town, necessitating some sort of organised transport to reach them. Nope. In reality, there aren't many places where you can't see some moai. We got talking to an English couple who had been there for a few days, who recommended a few nice places to go, then we went and had a nice bite to eat at Pea, a café bar next door to the moai we'd been touristing around.
The English couple had also told us where the Post Office was, telling us we could go there to get our passports stamped. Sounded a bit odd - we'd already been through immigration but received no stamps as Easter Island is part of Chile, from where we had flown. It turned out they were just talking about touristy souvenir stamps which you could buy. They then complained a bit about having had to pay to replace their old passports before they'd expired, because they were full of stamps. Well...maybe if you hadn't been filling them up with unofficial rubbish from Post Offices, that wouldn't have happened, eh? To the pair of us, including anything other than official stamps and visas in a passport is tantamount to vandalism, and certainly counts as cheating.
After lunch, we walked a short distance out of town to Ahu Tahai (an ahu is a ceremonial stone plinth arrangement on which groups of moai often stand, and in which people were sometimes buried), passing a few single moai on the way, and a large temporary stage which was being erected for a local festival whose beginning we would just miss. We wandered down to the shore and sat on the small sea wall, where, just as he was climbing down into the sea, Jacob was hit in the face by the only wave which broke there all day higher than about six inches. Yeah, cheers. Kirsty, a picture of sympathy and concern, is still bloody laughing as we write about this months later.
Back at the campsite, we set about cooking ourselves a meal, which was perfectly serviceable, but we bemoaned the fact that most of the other diners had had the foresight to buy wine. We had brought some supplies with us from Santiago, as we had been warned that due to its isolation, Easter Island can be an expensive place to shop.
We would need to replenish during the week, but we had got ourselves off to an OK start. The other grocery shopping issue we had encountered was that Easter Island seems to think water needs to be fizzy. The tap water isn't safe, which we were quite used to by this point, so we had been out to stock up on bottled water. It became quite a Herculean task to find still water, so when we found some, we bought a case of it which we lugged back to the campsite, a mile or two out of the town centre. Water's quite heavy really.
Whilst cooking, Jacob and a tall American shared a bit of a bitching session about people not washing up after themselves. Fair enough though: in a shared kitchen, it's only right to wash up once you have finished cooking. Or at least the same evening. Apparently not a philosophy shared by many of our camp mates. To be honest, if someone as naturally scruffy as Jacob thinks that it's a bit beyond the pale, it's probably really quite scuzzy.
We spent the evening playing cards, then headed to bed for some ant free sleep.
The following morning, dawn broke and soon after, we broke out in a sweat. Time to get out of the tent. We had decided that we would hire a motorbike in order to go and see some of the more distant moai sites and visit a beach that had been recommended to us by the English couple we had met the previous day.
After protracted debate about the relative merits of this bike over that bike, to which Kirsty's contribution was "I like the red one", we hired a Honda XR250 (red), which seemed perfectly OK but for its rather clanky chain. It had clearly been dropped a few times (didn't have its full complement of indicators for example), but frankly, that seemed to be the norm. Besides which, any damage which we may have ended up inflicting on it ought therefore to go largely unnoticed.
We had brought a bag of swim stuff and the like, so, armed with a small map of the island provided by the bike hire place, we found our way out of town to the beach road. Kirsty navigated by spreading the map across Jacob's shoulders and shouting directions in his ear. Jacob probably didn't appreciate this.
We got to Anakena beach and parked the bike in as much shade as we could find, then admired the seven moai as we passed them and hopped about a bit, having taken our shoes off before realising quite how damned hot the sand would be.
The shadows cast by the half dozen or so palm trees were entirely filled with people, but we managed to find a small area of shade that only had about 10,000 ants in it, so we settled for that. We didn't intend to sit in it anyway: the sea was far too inviting. Think of the footage you see on game shows when they announce where the winners are being sent on holiday. This place could have been sponsored by Bounty (chocolate, not kitchen roll!). Crystal blue waters, white sands, swaying palm trees (ha ha to all of those trying to stay in the shade), huge great carved stone faces...OK, so that's not quite so typical.
We spent a couple of hours enjoying this idyllic setting, but felt that we should probably use our transport to see some more of the island. We took our seats on the ridiculously hot bike and took the so-called 'road' which completed the loop back to Hanga Roa, which was of a much less paved quality than the one on which we had arrived (essentially a collection of rubble and red dust). We went to see Paro, which is the largest erected moai at 10 metres (there was one due to be 21 metres high, but it remained unfinished). It is no longer standing: it lies face down on the ground, its topknot a few metres away. Somehow very sad.
In fact, following the arrival of the first Europeans under Dutch Captain Jakob Roggeveen in 1722, virtually all of the moai were toppled. Abel Aubert Dupetit Thouars (now there's a name to conjure with), a French naval officer in charge of the French Southern Seas Command in the Pacific Ocean, was the last to report seeing any Moai still erect, in 1838. By 1868 all but a few partially buried statues left in the quarry had been flattened. All of those standing today have been re-erected by expeditions mounted by overseas visitors.
Near to the Paro moai is a small circle of stones with a lodestone in the centre. This is thought to have been brought here by Hotu Matua, the legendary original settler and King of Easter Island, and represents the
belief that Easter Island is the 'Navel of the World'. We didn't see much fluff though.
As we returned to the bike, it started drizzling, which at least held some of the red dust together a bit. We bounced our way down the track to the Ahu Tongariki site, which, with fifteen statues, is the largest stand of moai on the island and also the subject of many a poster and postcard. Quite rightly so: it is stunning.
Almost all of the moai actually look in from the shore, not out to sea as we had imagined. There is much speculation as to their purpose, but it is thought that they represented ancestors and were sited to stand guard over settlements.
Next stop on the magical mystery tour was Rano Raraku quarry, otherwise known as the nursery. This is where all of the moai were born. Easter Island resulted from the eruptions of three volcanoes between 300,000 and 150,000 years ago, forming the triangular shape of the island as the rock solidified between them. The quarry is sited on the outer face of one of the volcanic craters, and is quite an incredible sight as you emerge from the trees which surround the end of the track leading to it.
The moai were carved from the face of the volcanic rock, using tools made of volcanic rock, which is quite impressive if you think about it. Some of it is a little harder, so can be used to chip away at the stuff in the quarry...but if that's the hardest substance on the island, how did they form it into tools? Hmmm.
As the moai took shape, the masons gradually chipped around behind them, until they were attached to the volcano only by a narrow keel in the middle of the back. Once they were reasonably detailed, they were freed from this last small mooring and righted, whereupon the carving of the back was completed and they were transported to their intended site.
A lot of this is conjecture however, as there are no records of how the moai were made and moved from the quarry. There are various theories from various archaeologists and anthropologists involving rollers and dragging techniques, but the oral tradition has it that the priests used their spiritual 'mana' energy to enchant the statues and thus they walked to their eventual resting place. Simple really. Actually, one of the slightly less fanciful theories, postulated by the Czech engineer and anthropologist Pavel Pavel (so good they named him twice), ties in with this quite neatly. The idea is that ropes were lashed about the head of the erect statue, and teams on either side took it in turns hauling it from side to side as others to the front and rear stabilised it and guided it forwards. Imagine moving a heavy chest of drawers on your own - that sort of motion. He tried it in 1981 using a twelve tonne concrete model and seventeen people, with very good results. In 1986, Thor Heyerdahl invited him to Easter Island to try it with a real moai, and again, sixteen rope-pullers and one leader managed quite successfully to 'walk' the statue. The theory is further supported by the rounded edges on the underside of some of the carvings.
One of the other mysteries of the moai is why they stopped bothering with them. The quarry contains loads of them in various stages of completion, from basic shapes carved out of the rock (Jacob unwittingly found himself standing on a nose as he climbed up to get a better look at two still lying side by side in a hollowed out cave) to completed statues standing halfway down the slope to the track.
There are various theories involving tribal wars, foreign invasion and the culture just moving on to a new stage of religious development which didn't care about big faces. Again, nobody can really be certain.
We spent a few awestruck hours walking around amongst the heads, before following a path round behind them, up and over the lip of the crater, where, as you emerge through red volcanic dust onto the shores of the lake which fills it, you travel back about a thousand years in the space of a few footsteps. It really is quite breathtaking.
Suddenly, you are miles from anywhere, surrounded by trees and galloping wild horses, looking across the reed-bound lake and its green floating leaves to a cluster of standing moai on the far shore. If a group of spear-toting tribespeople in grass skirts with bones through their noses had magically appeared from history and begun chanting around the statues, we wouldn't have been in the least bit surprised. We sheltered under a tree as it began once again to rain, then, as it died down again, we made our way back to the bike.
The dirt track gave way to tarmac as the sun gave way to more rain, which got steadily worse until Jacob couldn't really see, so we stopped under a tree and huddled. It looked like it wouldn't stop any time soon (a bearded man in a dressing gown tramped past, leading pairs of animals to a big wooden boat), so, despite the filthy weather, we set off again. However grim it may have been, we still wore our sunglasses: given the choice between rain stung eyes and the landscape looking a bit dim and streaky, we plumped for the latter. Kirsty had the benefit of a large hairy windbreak, Jacob made do with Kirsty's little wraparound skirt wound round his face.
Minds out of the gutter please. She was sitting behind him, wearing trousers. She'd had the skirt in her bag to wear on the beach; Jacob had been using it as a scarf to keep the sun off his neck. OK?
A few minutes later, we rode out of the rain (there was an appreciable line on the road as we reached dry tarmac), and within fifteen minutes of setting off from under the tree, we were bone dry again. As we arrived back at the camp, we noticed that the clothes Kirsty had washed and hung out to dry had not suffered from rain at all. Hanga Roa hadn't seen a drop of rain all day.
After a quick cup of tea, we got back on the bike to go to Ahu Tahai in order to watch the sunset. Bit of a cliché, but one that was well worth indulging in. There were quite a lot of other people who had had the same idea, which lead to Jacob running around quite a lot as the sun dipped towards the sea, trying to find just the right angle from which to capture the scenery against the backdrop of the sunset red sky, without the inclusion of too many extra faces, as it were.
After the beauty of the sunset, we returned to the camp and the chaos of the shared kitchen, where we prepared and consumed another tuna based meal, washed down with a nice bottle of red wine. Well, carton of red wine, but let's not be fussy.
The following morning, we got off to an early start as we had still got the bike for a few hours before it was due to be returned. We rode out to the Rano Kau volcano, whose crater contained another lake filled with greenish brown lumps of vegetation resulting in a 'looking at the world from space' sort of effect. The volcano sides and vertiginous cliffs slope straight down into the ocean. The views were lovely, but the light was poor as it was still quite overcast, so after some tinkering with the camera, with limited results, we decided to return to town and take the bike back.
On the way back to the camp, we passed an internet café (not only is this remote place connected to the net, they have WiFi. It seems it is only us who are in the technological dark ages) so we stopped to check our e-mail and start looking for Couch Surfs in Auckland.
Back at the campsite, Kirsty set about washing our clothing, which, after the previous twenty four hours of dirt road motorcycling, were approximately clothing colour at the top but a solid dusty orange-red at the bottom, moving through every shade of filthy in between.
Fancying a bit of a swim, we collected our things and walked round to the tiny little beach adjoining the Pea café where we ate on the first day. It had looked quite pleasant, and there were always a lot of people swimming and surfing around there, so we thought we'd give it a go. The diminutive dimensions wouldn't matter, as the sea was the bit in which we were interested. Unfortunately, all the people we had seen enjoying themselves swimming, surfing and generally mucking about were clearly mental.
The beach is quite sandy, but once ankle deep in the sea, it becomes an unending vicious snarling mess of jagged rocks and pointed shells. The current is quite strong, but the beach does not shelve at all steeply: the water stays approximately knee deep for at least half a mile, except for a steepish little drop off into a narrow channel along one edge which is pretty much off limits because that's where the dive and tour boats come and go. So, too shallow for swimming without smacking into the substrate and ripping your knees and feet to shreds, with an undertow which would give you little chance of standing back up even if there was anything to stand on.
Limping, bleeding and cursing the Easter Island section of the Chile Lonely Planet guide which recommends this "tiny but lovely" beach for anyone in Hanga Roa who should "fancy a dip" we emerged from the sea, dressed, and grumbled our way back to camp, showered off the salt and the more stubbornly ingrained leftover grime from the dust and muck ridden motorcycling extravaganza.
All clean and lovely and clad in our driest clothing, we went in search of a restaurant for dinner. We went to a bar that seemed nice, but their menu, although quite fancy, didn't include the lobster for which this place was famous, and which we had therefore decided we had to try. The next place we tried had lobster on the menu, but, as is often the way, the quoted price was just a guide: the lobster would be sold by weight. They only had big lobsters left. Very, very big lobsters. The meal would be more than twice the guide price on the menu, and although intending to treat ourselves, we weren't quite going to stretch to a bill in excess of £100 for a single course.
After that, we checked out a smaller, slightly more low key looking place higher up the street, and their lobsters were a little more reasonably proportioned - we could share one for about £45. The boat would be well and truly pushed out, but we wouldn't need quite such a long boathook as for the last place.
The lobster was glorious. Split in half, served on a bed of stir-fried julienne vegetables in soy sauce, the lobster itself was, as these things should be, not mucked about with. We rapidly descended from our usually eloquent selves into creatures capable only of rapturous groans. Occasionally there would be a hint of speech ("Mmn, yeah, wow, you've got to try this stuff in the tail, omm nomm nomm..."), but only a hint. Good though the wine may have been, we had to keep reminding ourselves to drink it as it seemed more of a distraction than an accompaniment. All rounded off perfectly by dipping the accompanying bread into the little pot of now very lobstery melted butter. Normally fans of crab who are unable to see what all the fuss surrounding lobster is about, we were very much converted.
The conversation on the way back to camp was largely crustacean dominated. After a few games of cards, we crawled our way into the tent.
Once the sound of our legs sizzling like bacon got to loud to bear, we emerged, made some breakfast and, as Jacob was finishing up with the toast, he nodded a greeting to the Japanese couple who had been sitting opposite us on the train from Cusco to Puno at the end of December.
Double take.
It's funny how you end up running into the same people, but particularly on a camp site in the world's most remote inhabited place. It's also funny how you can have quite lengthy conversations with people and never find out their names.
Given the apparent lack of any public transport on Easter Island, and apparent lack of beach in Hanga Roa, we decided to try hitching back up to Anakena. We walked out to the main road, stuck out our thumbs...the first car ignored us, but the second picked us up.
It turned out that he was only going as far as the next junction, about three kilometres up the road, after which, chances were anybody we encountered would be going our way, as there wasn't really anywhere else for that road to go. We hopped out, crossed the road, stood a little way up from the junction where, about thirty seconds later, we got into the pickup which stopped for us, and was going all the way to the beach. Nice.
The beach was as beautiful as before and we spent a pleasant afternoon in the sun, swimming and chatting to a guy from the campsite who had also made his way there.
Based on the success we had in hitching to the beach, we assumed that getting a ride back to the town, in the direction everybody would be going in, would be a doddle.
Never make assumptions.
We set off walking, sticking out our thumbs to all passing vehicles, but to no avail. After a while, the tall American from the campsite caught up with us. He walked on ahead of us as Jacob stopped to apply plasters to the blisters he had rubbed.
The sun was baking hot and we were beginning to suspect that every vehicle was going to ignore us. We had reasoned before we left that it would be possible for us to walk back from the beach in around three hours if we couldn't get a lift, but it was so hot that it didn't seem like a particularly inviting option. Fortunately, a pickup which was already full inside and had three other hitchers in the back stopped for us. We gratefully climbed aboard and, like dogs hanging their heads out of the window of a car on a hot day, enjoyed the breeze rushing across our faces as the truck drove on to Hanga Roa. The back of pickup trucks is the only way to travel in hot countries.
Soon after we arrived back at camp, the tall American arrived too. Tired of referring to him as "the tall American", Kirsty asked his name (Brett) and introduced herself. Meanwhile, Jacob had made a start on our evening meal and had got talking to a guy from Reunion Island who seemed to be a constant fixture in the kitchen every evening, cooking little fish. It turned out that he was a fisherman; he went out fishing every day and in the evening, he would cook up his catch for the family. He offered to bring us some fish for the following evening, which sounded nice, so we accepted.
We attempted to play cards and listen to some music on our iPod and little speaker, but the Reunion Island fisherman started playing the guitar. Badly. Various people seemed to be encouraging him, so he continued playing for the majority of the evening, which somewhat scuppered our plans to listen to some music. At least he got some much needed practice.
The following morning, after breakfast, we walked into town to Orca Dive Centre, with whom we had booked a diving session. Jacob is a qualified diver but hadn't been underwater for some time. Kirsty, however, had never dived before. We had been told that the diving off Easter Island was quite spectacular and had thus organised a 'Discover Scuba Diving' session, which was a suitable starter level for Kirsty and a useful refresher for Jacob.
Once we arrived, we were given a run through of the basics of diving. More realistically, Kirsty was taught the basics as Jacob's training all came flooding back to him (excuse the pun) as he got his first sniff of neoprene.
We were kitted out in all the necessary rubber and shiny equipment, then we were ready to go. The group was small: four divers and four instructors. We soon arrived by boat at the dive site and donned our tanks. Then, the moment we had both been waiting for....
...splash!
Rolling in backwards, Kirsty was surprised how easy that bit had been. We were each with a separate instructor and were both taken down to just under the surface to check that we weren't going to freak out. Jacob was far from freaking out, he took control and descended by himself, neatly controlling his buoyancy so that he stopped just off the sea bed. Suitably impressed with his skills, Jacob's instructor pretty much left him to it after that and the pair of them went to explore.
Kirsty had slightly more issues, but she was very new to this. Her buoyancy was controlled by the instructor and although slightly unnerved at first by just how loud her breathing seemed to be and how many bubbles she was creating, she did OK. After a slight false start in which she had to ascend to the surface again due to ear pain that she couldn't get to equalise, she descended again, just in time to see a turtle swim by! The words 'beginners' and 'luck' spring to mind. Jacob later cursed his proficiency: a little less expertise and a little more delay in heading off into the coral would probably have allowed him to see it too.
We meandered around in the gin clear waters for around half an hour, seeing some lovely fish and coral formations. The visibility was incredible; it felt like we could see for miles.
Far too soon, it was all over and we inelegantly climbed back into the boat and were whisked back to shore. We had showers and changed into dry clothing, paid and received our certificates.
Full of excitement and unable to stop talking about what we had seen, we went back to camp where we made some salami sandwiches and gathered together some things for the afternoon.
We had decided that we would hire another motorbike and ride back out to the quarries in the evening, hoping to take some photographs whilst the light was better. We walked into town and discovered that all of the bike rental places were closed, so we bought some postcards and sat outside the shop writing them.
Once the bike shops opened, we went to the one across the street from the one we had previously used. Jacob had been hoping to try one of their fleet, but the only type they had left were the same as the one we had previously hired. We agreed to take one and paid and signed the paperwork.
However, once the bike was started up, it became apparent that the digital speedometer display was broken. Easter Island may be quite laid back, but it does have speed limits and we didn't particularly wish to break them, so we asked if we could take of the other two bikes they had available. We were told that they didn't have working speedometers or necessarily working engines, so we decided against the place and went back across the road to the hire company we had used before.
This company had two bikes available: the one which we had taken previously and it's blue twin. The way that they had been parked against the wall meant that the blue one was easier to access, so we took that one. We had only got it onto the road immediately outside the shop when that speedometer gave out too.
Despite the protestations of the owner ("it's fine, no problem, no problem, you don't need speedometer") we swapped it for the clanky chained version we had taken out a few days previously. At least we could see how fast we were going...
Finally equipped, we rode out to Rano Raraku and spent a while wandering around and taking photographs. We found the odd-one-out of the Moai: Tukuturi, the kneeling statue. He's not quite like the others - he has, amongst other differences, a beard and a lower body (with which to kneel). Nobody's quite sure why.
Feeling quite weary from the day's activities, we then rode back to camp.
As we were cooking up another pasta and tuna in tomato sauce meal, the fisherman from Reunion Island turned up and presented us with four fish. Four reef fish. They looked very much like some of the fish we had seen whilst diving.
We cooked up the fish with just a little salt and pepper, which we thought would be a simple way to appreciate them at their best. Unfortunately it turns out that there is a reason that reef fish tend not to be caught commercially for food. Two of the fish turned into mushy goo as soon as they reached higher than body temperature. The other two retained their integrity but all four tasted...well...nasty.
We ate some of it, but ultimately ended up trying to hide the remains between the two plates so that we could sneak them into the bin without offending the fisherman. When asked if we had enjoyed it, we of course smiled sweetly and nodded. Some parts of the English heritage are hard to shake.
After a few rounds of cards, we went to bed, setting the alarm for early o'clock. Seemingly minutes later, it went off. Wearily, we dragged ourselves back out of bed and got on the bike.
As we rode to Ahu Tongariki, the sky started to lighten as dawn approached. As we rounded the last corner, we were greeted with the sight of two tourist buses and a field full of nutters.
Evidently, seeing sunrise at Ahu Tongariki is a big part of the tourist package. We hadn't expected there to be anyone else around at this early hour, but the place was filled with around fifty people, all eerily quiet. As we found ourselves a spot, a few were swaying slightly.
The sun started to break over the horizon, which seemed to rouse the inner lunacy in many of these individuals. A lot of them were holding lengths of reed, knotted at the end, which they started whirling around their heads. Some started doing yoga and tai-chi poses, someone started playing a pseudo celtic sounding wailing sort of tune on some sort of Tibetan nose flute or suchlike and a few people started crying. We struggled hard not to laugh.
We took photos of the sunrise over the moai and of the nutters. A fat woman in a shawl, followed by a string of slightly less flamboyant women, did a kind of dancing mince along the front of the ahu which involved a fair amount of shoulder shaking and some singing/shouting. About half way across the moai, this seemed to evolve into a haka of sorts. We failed to suppress a giggle.
The problem with these sorts of people is not so much their lunatic behaviour, it's that it is so painfully apparent that whilst they are not being 'spiritual', they are more likely to be found doing something much more akin to, perhaps, teaching geography, being part of the church committee and washing the Volvo on Sundays. That may sound a little unfair, but after the sun rose, we took a few more photos, turned to leave and discovered the same people all sitting by the fleet of tour-buses with blankets over their knees, eating sandwiches out of Tupperware boxes. Very spiritual.
We got back on the bike and rode out to Anakena, where the beach turned out to be entirely deserted. We claimed a patch of sand, got changed and sat enjoying the sun for a while. We were joined a little while later by a dog, which, despite having the run of the entire beach, came and sat right beside us. It had found an abandoned flip-flop on the beach, which it set about killing (the flip-flop can be a dangerous foe if you're not careful), then started eying up our shoes, so we chased it away.
A short while later, an elderly man arrived, went for a swim, singing all the while in a loud, clear tenor, then left again. We decided to go for a swim as well and were still in the water when the first tour coach of the day arrived.
Kirsty went and read her book and took some photos of palm trees, whilst Jacob got chatting to some of the tour people. He entered the conversation as something of an interpreter between an Australian and an American. For the benefit of those not fully au fait with the international variations in English, here is a small phrase book.
Thong: Sandal or flip-flop (Australian)
Thong: Small piece of underwear or bottom half of bikini (English/American)
You can probably imagine where this is going...
Somewhat bewildered by anybody feeling the need to wear footwear on such a beautiful sandy beach, the Australian guy had asked the American girl why anyone would want to wear thongs in the sea.
Jacob stepped in before the American girl could get too offended and defused the situation by providing a translation. The difference between American/Australian/Proper (sorry) English was discussed for a while, before the conversation turned to travel, and then to food. Alexander, the Aussie, was interested to hear of the fantastic lobster we had had the other night, as apparently his father was a chef for whom lobster was a particular speciality, so he now regards himself as something of a connoisseur.
Hearing we would be heading to Oz, he gave us a recommendation too: Vlado's Steakhouse in Richmond, Melbourne, was recommended to him by the owner-chef of a Texan steakhouse as serving the best steaks in the world. That's a Texan, who owns a steakhouse, openly gushing about another steakhouse being the best in the world. Well, that's a pretty powerful recommendation. Alex, a native of Melbourne, had never heard of it, but made a point of visiting when he went home, and whole heartedly concurs.
So, that's as good a reason as any to include Melbourne on our Australian itinerary.
Eventually, we decided that, lovely as the beach was, we should make use of our bike hire time and go and see some more parts of the island. After a brief lunch at camp, we went to visit Anu Kai Tangata, a cave between Hanga Road and the Rano Kau volcano famed for its cave paintings relating to the Birdman cult phase of the island's history (more on which later). We spent a while looking at and photographing the impressive remnants of the cave art and the equally impressive natural mineral colourations of the rocks. The cave also opens directly out onto the sea, with its attendent spume. Good word, spume.
We rode back up to the Rano Kau volcano and took some pictures of the crater as the light was much better than when we had been to visit a few days previously. We also went to visit the Orongo ceremonial village, which clings to the cliff edge at the crater of the volcano.
Orongo is a strange place. It is known that the village was built for ceremonies involving the birdman cult, and was occupied for only part of the year. People from different tribal groups would come and live in little houses located on the seaward side of the volcano, partly dug into the clifftop, partly built with slabs of stone. The short row of buildings, reconstructed and now maintained by the Chilean National Parks Authority, are oval, and said to resemble upturned canoes. They are accessed through a small doorway, only just big enough to allow a person to crawl through.
Little is known of the birdman cult. It is known that at some point, the inhabitants of Easter Island abandoned their megalithic statue creation and instead started behaving quite oddly. The cult of the Tangata Manu (birdman)may well have coexisted with the Moai based religion for a while, but as with most of Easter Island's history, meaningful records are pretty much non-existent. Certainly by the late nineteenth century, the Cult of the Birdman had taken over, before itself being eradicated by that more famous of religious zealots with little or no justification for their dogma: the Christian missionary.
What is known is that the birdman contest took place annually, and consisted of a race from ceremonial village of Orongo, down the almost vertical seaward slopes of Rano Kau, across the sea to the islet of Motu Nui, risking death by falling, drowning or being eaten by sharks, to collect the first Sooty Tern egg of the season. The successful candidate would then swim back to the island, climb back up the cliffs of Rano Kau, risking death by falling, drowning or being eaten by sharks. Presumably, being pecked at by a maternally enraged Sooty Tern isn't a great laugh either.
Contestants would be selected by 'ivi-attuas' (prophets), who would dream their identities. The contestants (usually high ranking types), would nominate a 'hopu' (lackey), who would run the race for them. Once a winner arrived back at Orongo, a fire would be lit on the landward side of Rano Kau, with the location indicating whether the winner was from an eastern or western clan. The winning contestant (the one in the dream, not the one who actually ran the race), would be declared 'Tangata manu' (birdman), and would be completely shaved (including the eyelashes) and spend the year living as a recluse, visited only by priests (nobody else being even allowed to lay eyes on them), who were the only ones allowed to feed, clothe or wash him. The only ones. Not even the birdman himself was allowed to perform these tasks. Great prize.
It is thought that the winning clan would then have dibs on all the bird eggs and fledglings from Motu Nui for the year. Motu Nui is tiny. Great prize.
Also at Orongo is a large collection of petroglyphs (symbols carved in the rock), representing various aspects of the ritual behaviour. From the number of petroglyphs alone - they are not only sited at Orongo - it is known that the birdman cult was a major part of island life. Abstract and stylised though they are, they are one of the significant sources of information about the known aspects of the cult of Tangata Manu.
Leaving Orongo, we were greeted with a smell of petrol. Accompanying the scent was our motorbike, lying on its side next to a suspiciously adjacent Land Rover, which hadn't been there when we arrived. Fortunately, the leaking petrol was just dribbling out of the top of the tank, not from any ruptures, and the general beat-up state of the bike meant any additional scratches were only just identifiable to us - by the time we returned it, the additional accumulated grime from the dirt track back to Hanga Roa would cover them up nicely.
Its having been upside down meant starting it took a bit longer than normal, but after a bit of persistence (and swearing, swearing's always good for fixing dodgy motorcycles) the flooded fuel was cleared, and it spluttered and banged back into life. Back into town, Kirsty hanging on for dear life (Jacob knew which way we were going to lean and bounce, but it was always news to Kirsty), we returned the bike, cleaned ourselves back up at camp, and went out for a meal.
We'd booked ourselves a table at Le Taverne du Pecheur, a restaurant recommended in the guidebook as having great food but grumpy staff, particularly the proprietor. They were half right: the food was great. Jacob had been drooling over the thought of the Filet Mignon a la Forestiere since seeing it on the menu the previous week; Kirsty had been less adamant about what she would be having, but had her eye on the 'Rape Rape', a kind of little lobster. Pierre, the French owner, took our order, warning Kirsty against having a starter given the size of the main she was ordering, and raising an approving eyebrow at Jacob's ordering of his Filet Mignon "cuit bleu".
Jacob's beef, wound up in smoked bacon, with mushrooms and a garlic cream sauce, was...well, as good as that sounds. Kirsty's little lobsters: just refer back to the previous lobster comments. The wine was pretty respectable too. We were in a restaurant with the sense to provide us with an ice bucket for our red wine, knowing as they did that room temperature in this part of the world is really rather higher than the recommended ideal.
Special mention goes to Jacob's aperitif: the most peculiar Bloody Mary either of us have encountered. They had no Tomato Juice, so Pierre mixed the vodka and chilli with freshly pulped tomatoes, still frothy out of the blender. Abolutely nothing at all like a Bloody Mary, but something to behold.
Well fed and watered, we walked back to camp, trying briefly on the camp's internet connection to do the online check in thing for following day's flight, having been unable to reserve leggy seats when we visited Hanga Roa's airline office. It didn't work, so we quickly gave up, making arrangements with Marta, the camp owner, to get a lift to the airport in plenty of time. So to bed.
The following morning, being our last day on the island, Kirsty packed our bags whilst Jacob made use of the kitchen facilities to prepare breakfast and lunch before we had to check out at 10am. We went to the post office and organised sending home a package of bits and pieces along with a large bunch of postcards - a pocket lightening experience. We sat by the market building, which seemed to be the most ant-free spot we could find and ate our pasta and tuna. Directly out of the bag. Classy.
Time needed to be killed, so we thought we would pay a cultural visit to the Padre Sebastián Englert Anthropological Museum. The museum was a lot further fromthe centre of town than had been indicated by our guidebook and the signs that we had seen from the centre, so we were half dead from sweating by the time we got there. The museum houses a variety of exhibits and information boards relating to the island and its history. It is also inhabited by a rather large number of ants.
In addition to the expected information about Easter Island's geographical setting and geological history - and of course moai and birdman related exhibits - there was particularly interesting section of the museum relating to the 'Rongorongo' inscriptions. These appear to be some sort of writing, but to date, no-one has been able to decipher them. Some of the symbols appear to relate to dates or genealogy, although even these cannot be accurately pinned down.
The inscriptions take the form known to linguists as 'boustrophedon', a name borrowed from Greek, literally meaning 'oxen turning', as it is written back and forth (like the path taken by an ox yoked to a plough), rather than every line running from left to right or right to left. Rongorongo takes a particularly awkward form known as 'reverse boustrophedon': that is, the tablet needs to be turned through 180° for each new line.
Only a couple of dozen examples of Rongorongo were ever found, and some of these are badly damaged: burnt or heavily weathered. A very small number of the island's petroglyphs may be examples of Rongorongo too. Unfortunately, according to oral tradition, very few of the island's population were ever literate, and few (if any) islanders were able to read Rongorongo by the later portion of the nineteenth century when more concerted anthropological interest was being taken.
As with much of Easter Island's cultural history, all hope of explanation and detail is pretty much lost. As well as the great tradition of ripping lumps out of each other and unsustainably rapacious use of the island's resources which the tribes built up (hence the lack of much vegetation these days), the population was also somewhat depleted by slaving raids. The most devastating of these was the 1862 Peruvian raid, in which between 1400 and 2000 islanders (including the King and most of the ruling class) were taken to work in the guano industry. After eventual intervention by the French ambassador to Peru, the 15 survivors of the raid were returned to the island, where the smallpox they took home with them wreaked havoc amongst the remaining inhabitants.
The population bottomed out at 111 in 1877, only 36 of whom had any descendants. Today, all of Easter Island's Rapanui (the native Polynesians) claim descent from those 36. Suffice it to say, any knowledge of how to read Rongorongo died with the ones who didn't make the 111, as did a wealth of knowledge of genealogy and religious affairs.
We walked a slightly shorter and less sweaty route back into town, now we knew where the museum was in relation to various tracks and paths, and sat by the market building eating the remains of our picnic, before calling in at a bar for cocktails to use up our last few Chilean Pesos.
Back at the campsite, we collected our bags from the deserted house, and were debating whether, despite our having arranged a lift, we would need to hitch to the airport, when Marta showed up.
"Are your names Jacob and Kirsty?"
Well, having been there for a week, and having been in her house arranging a lift less than 24 hours ago, you can see how she might have forgotten us.
"You no pay diving!"
After a lot of agitated finger pointing and bad English, she made it clear that the Orca Dive Centre had contacted her and complained that we hadn't paid for our diving session. Moreover, she wanted us to wait, and the guys from Orca would be there by 8.30 to collect their money, in cash. No, no and, quite frankly, no. We had already paid, we had already explained that we needed to be at the airport by 8.00, and we had spent all our cash on, amongst other things, diving. The island's one cash machine would have charged us a hefty commission to withdraw money, so we had budgeted our Pesos very carefully. Our wallets were pretty much empty by this point, and there's no way we could have spent the 140,000 (about £70) we had supposedly not paid Orca and not noticed.
Bradon, a Canadian long-term resident at the campsite and occasional employee at Orca, came over to stick in his oar. In quizzing us about just who we had paid, he mentioned that they tend to be terrible at keeping up with payments and records. Well quite. Did we have receipts, could we prove we'd paid, etc, etc? We had, that day, been through our accumulated paperwork, posting home what we wanted and chucking out what we didn't, so no, we had no receipts: why would we have kept them? We couldn't very well take a diving lesson back to the shop to complain that it didn't fit, now could we? Frankly, the onus was not on us to prove anything anyway, and we had, quite urgently, to leave the country. We left Bradon our e-mail addresses to pass on to Orca. To date they haven't contacted us, so presumably they've tracked down the source of the mistake. An apology would have been nice, but they probably didn't realise how savage Marta had been when she tackled us.
"So, can we, umm, you know, have our lift to the airport? Please?"
"No, you wait, you pay diving!"
After further explanation that we had to go to the airport, and that as Orca's office was now closed so they couldn't take a credit card payment, the banks were closed so we couldn't change traveller's cheques, that we had no money on us as we had to leave, now, there would be no point in us waiting for Orca to turn up even if we were going to pay them. So, please, whether you believe them or us, just get us to the damned airport! We threatened to just walk, so she relented, called Jessica who turned up in a couple of minutes in her pickup and took us to the airport. A shame about all that really. A bit of a sour note on which to leave.
Jessica was all smiles though, and gave us each a (rather tacky) little moai necklace as we reached the airport.
After passing through passport control and receiving our official Easter Island exit stamp in our passports, we sat down with a beer (the very, very tail end of our Chilean Pesos), celebrating our still having been able to get leggy seats despite the delays. We got talking to a late-middle aged English couple, the female of which was wrestling her way into her flight socks, after which she sighed, and said something along the lines of "Well, that was a lot of effort. Still, at least now I won't get a DVT."
Here comes a brief rant.
DVT flight socks don't do a great deal. Long periods of sitting down (such as on a long haul flight, or, indeed, on a bus) can lead, in some cases, to blood pooling slightly at the lower reaches of the leg. The cramped seating position and dehydration caused by air recirculation don't help either. The best way to combat it is to move. The idea behind the sock things is to compress the blood vessels slightly, so the blood can't fall back down inside the legs, but just putting on DVT socks, drinking the complementary wine and falling asleep will not give you much of a fighting chance.
Kirsty explained this, in a succinct and friendly manner, with a brief name checking of her professional experience as an advisor on health issues for the NHS.
The response was a rather condescending "Well, when you're my age dear..." type answer. We made a brief joke that if she gave herself a heart attack putting them on, they probably weren't doing her any favours, which seemed to help, and we nattered with them until boarding.
So, Easter Island hadn't really explained any of its mysteries to us, any more than it ever has to anyone else. We had a pretty good time finding out how much there is not to know though.
