Rapa Nui and Birdman

  Hanga Roa, Easter Island, Chile
Wednesday, December 10, 2003

So having visited most of Polynesia and Melanesia in my tour of the South Pacific I've come to the last stop, Easter Island and what a magical place this is!

We arrived here on monday morning about 11am and found somewhere to stay. This must be the low season as hotel owners were virtually fighting over tourists and rates are about a third of their normal level! All good news for us backpackers!

Easter Island is known by the locals as Rapa Nui and it has just one town, Hanga Roa where virtually every one of the 2,700 or so inhabitants live. The island is roughly triangular in shape with an extinct volcano on each corner.

On Monday afternoon I took a hike up the volcano just to the south of Hanga Roa, the closest one to the town. On the way up you get great views of Hanga Roa and in fact, great views of the whole island. At the top of the volcano is a huge crater filled by a lake and looking down to the side is a small island (motu). Not so long ago there was a cult of the birdman. What happened is every year, the islanders would hold a competition to see who could swim to the island, grab the egg of a sooty tern (a type of sea bird) and return to the mainland the quickest. Whoever accomplished this feat in the shortest time became the island's chief for a year!


View of Hanga Roa from the southern volcano


Crater lake at the top of the southern volcano


The motu that competitors swam to for the birdman competition


Competitors in the birdman competition had to stay in these special houses until the time came for the race

After a tiring day's hiking - well we only hiked back down actually as some guy from the Chilean home office gave us a lift up the volcano - the sky was looking pretty cloudless and a good sunset looked like it was on the cards. So along with about half the tourists on the island, we headed down to a site just north of Hanga Roa where there are some Moai (statues) lined up on the coast conveniently positioned for a good sunset photo!


Moai near Hanga Roa at sunset.

On Tuesday three of us hired a jeep and went off to tour round the island. First off we came across a row of 7 Moai which face out to sea. These Moai had been restored by archeologists as all of the Moai on the island were toppled when Europeans arrived. This is one of the great mysteries of Easter Island! These 7 Moai are meant to represent some great gods and they're unusual in that they're the only ones that face out to sea.



Then we headed off for the South Coast. All along the coast of the whole island are Ahu (stone platforms) with Moai. Unfortunately most of the Moai have been tumbled either deliberately or by natural disasters apart from the few that have been restored by archeologists. We stopped all along the coast and the Moai just got better and better until we reached the Quarry.


Tumbled Moai - unfortunately this is what most of the Moai look like.

The Quarry was really something special. The ancient islanders just cut the moai directly from the rock then transported them about the island. At some point they just abandoned the Moai and so the whole quarry is littered with statues in various stages of completion - very strange!


Initial view of the Quarry with a field full of half finished Moai


A Field full of heads!


The Moai are cut directly from the rock


It seems they just downed tools one day and left all these heads just standing in the field

Just round from the quarry was perhaps my favourite sight of all. A row of 15 moai have been restored in a small bay to the eastern end of the island - this is what Easter Island is all about!


15 Moai have been restored in a Bay to the eastern end of the island


One of my favourite sights from my whole trip

And finally, I thought I'd check out the underwater world. Easter Island is about 2000 kms from the nearest other land mass and rises sharply from great depths so I had expectations of some deep sea fish - big ones in particular such as a few sharks. Turns out though that most of the sharks have been fished out so instead it's the endemic fish which are of interest and there's a few unusual ones. I did 2 dives and although they didn't have the sharks to match French Polynesia they were still very interesting and we even saw three turtles which is always a good thing in my book.


Cow Fish


Golden Morray Eel


Puffer Fish


Sea Urchin - the reef was literally covered in these!


A Yellow Trumpet Fish - just one of the weird and wonderful Trumpet fish that live in Easter Island