Four hours in Lima flew by as I enjoyed the business lounge delights.
Not the same could be said for Santiago. No lounges here. Caught about six hours sleep on the airport chairs before a Starbucks latte kicked some life back into me.
Fifteeen hours after I left La Paz, I boarded the plane for Easter Island.
I love business class. Snuggling under the white fluffy duvet, I napped for a while before enjoying a world class meal. Time flew.
The runway on Isla de Pascua is extra long because of it's role as an emergency landing strip for the space shuttle. As we taxied towards the terminal I peeked outside at the lush tropical vegetation and the small airport building. The luggage came quickly and I swung my backpack on and made my way to the exit.
"Iorana, welcome to Rapa Nui."said Lucinda who greeted me with a fragrant frangipani lei around my neck. At my quaint hotel, Tiare Pacifica, I was welcomed with a fresh squeezed papaya juice. The cold sweetness quenched my throat, parched from the dry air on the plane.
After checking in, I decided to do a bit of exploring on foot.
Hanga Roa, the main town on the island has a population of 5000. It's pretty spread out so it took me about half an hour to get down to the little caleta (port) where I found a cute coffee shop called Macafe and enjoyed a cappuccino with banana pancakes. Humming Jack Johnson's song in my head I watched the locals surfing and the fishermen fixing their nets on the dock as colourful wooden boats bobbed around in the little harbour.
After a couple of hours I took a wander along the rocky coast and found a perfect little spot for a sundowner and dinner. The cocktail was a Moai Sour and the meal was a local fish called Cana Cana with green curry sauce and purple sweet potatoes. All this was enjoyed while watching the sun set over the Pacific at around 9:30pm.
The following day consisted of exploring the east side of the island. We stopped at the ruins of a village and a few fallen moai. Only the foundations and terraces of the boat shaped houses remained as they were built of stone and the rest of the house of branches and palm fronds.
The moai are the enigmatic statues Rapa Nui is known for and were built to guard the villages from evil. They were carved out of soft volcanic rock in a quarry up in the hills with a sharpened tool fashioned out of basalt. The top knots above their heads were carved from yet another softer, red volcanic rock.
The ahus are the platforms built to mount the moais on. Only once the moai is placed on an ahu and coral eyes are inserted into it's eye sockets, does it receive a magical power called mana. According to the Rapa Nui people's beliefs, the moai are powerless until they receive the mana, then if you touch them you would die.
All the moais on the island, except in two locations, face inwards, towards land and the village they are protecting.
No exact theory exists to why they were all knocked down between the 16th and 17th centuries, but some archeologists believe that Spanish explorers arrived on the island and out of curiosity, touched the moais. The natives, seeing this, realized that the mana would not kill them and proceeded to knock each other's moais down to remove the protection from the villages. At this time the population of Easter Island was around 20 000, the land could not support this amount of people and food was scarce. The Spanish found a starving, dwindling population waging war against each other.
Today only a few ahus have been restored and moais raised up to face inland once again. Another few hundred lie face down, weathered away by wind and rain, or half buried at the quarry on Rano Raraku volcano. Some remain unfinished still attached to the volcano or lie abandoned, scattered around the island on their way to an ahu.
The most impressive restored ahu is Tongariki It consists of 12 moais of various shapes and sizes with blank stares, prominent noses and voluptuous lips.
Another is at Anakena Beach, Ahu Nau Nau, where 7 moais with red topknots ignore the powder sand beach and turquoise water to stare towards the hills and the ruins of a village they once protected. I, on the other hand, decided to go for a dip in the lovely warm water of the Pacific and swam open eyed along the bottom of the bay, trailing my hand along the rippled white sand, watching little fish dart out of my way.
Our final stop for the day was to see the one lone moai at Ahu Ko Te Riku that has been fully restored complete with the coral eyes, basalt irises and red topknot. You could also see the carved hands clasped over the belly.
Moais were made bigger and bigger as size became important in the amount of protection and status they provided. The largest moai lies half buried at the quarry and when excavated in the seventies, measured 12 meters.
Christmas eve I decided to go for a traditional meal of barbecued pork ribs and chicken with sweet potato, plantains and bean salad. Afterwards I sat with a frosty Pisco sour and watched a show of native Rapa Nui dances. It was very similar to the Tahitian dancing except that the men, as well as dancing aggressively with foot stomping and shouting, moved their hips more.
I made sure to sit right at the back because I knew they would be calling up the unsuspecting tourists to the stage to dance with them. No such luck, a brawny Rapa Nuian spotted my blond hair, made his way to the back and dragged me to the stage. After an embarrassing couple of minutes trying to keep up with the rhythm of the music, which seemed like it went on for hours, I received a sweaty hug and got let go red-faced back to my seat. So much for sitting at the back, next time I'll wear a hat!
"Feliz Navidad!" said a smiling girl with a red hibiscus in her hair as she set a plate of fresh cut tropical fruits in front of me. I sipped my papaya juice and opened the gift that the hotel had put on my breakfast table. An Easter Island mug - what a thoughtful touch. I made a mental note to write a good review about them in Trip Advisor.
Christmas day consisted of visiting the south western part of the island. The Orongo ceremonial village and Rano Kau crater.
A short walk up to the edge of the crater afforded us with spectacular views of the swamp like interior. Long reeds grew in a patchy lake that looked like something from an alien planet. Apparently a monk had planted various fruit trees at the bottom and now they grow wild along the edges with only the occasional adventurer taking on the steep sides to sample the delicacies below.
Wedged between the crater and the notorious cliffs that plunge into the deep blue Pacific, lies the Orongo ceremonial village. This village was created solely to house the competitors of the bird man challenge and the chiefs of the various clans.
The bird man cult started much later than the era of the moais and consisted of an important competition where young men braved the crumbling, vertical cliffs to descend to the pounding ocean below. The next leg consisted of swimming with the aid of narrow reed rafts to Motu Nui, a small island where the sooty tern laid it's eggs. The first man to return back up the cliffs to the village with an egg was proclaimed bird man for that year.
A group of carved boulders on the edge of a precipice overlooking the little island bear the petroglyphs of each bird man competition. More than 150 bird men cover these volcanic rocks and testify to a brutal, sometimes fatal competition.
As we trundled back to Hanga Roa along the dusty road, I thought of this ancient civilization of exploring, seafaring people able to find this spit of land in the middle of nowhere and settle here. Never deciphered, their written alphabet, the only one originating in Oceania, remains a mystery. Their history, not quite understood, will always capture the imagination and speculation of scholars across the world for years to come.
"Mahalo." - "Thank you," Rapa Nui for a truly magical experience.
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