Bike Tour of the Island

Because Easter Island is only about 25 miles long, it's the perfect size for an all-day bike tour. The two main roads on the island pretty much make a circuit, starting off on the southern coast, then cutting north to the beaches, and then back across the rolling volcanic hills of the interior. You pretty much see it all, with plenty of opportunities for historical stops and rainbows along the way. Most of the moai sites on the island remain toppled, and we passed several of them along the coast in the morning. We then reached Rano Raraku, and since I still hadn't been inside the crater (the shots in the previous post are only from the hill outside the volcano), we went in again. We then went to Tongariki and cut north to the beaches, where I left my friend Daniela, who wanted to do some swimming. But it looked like rain, so I headed back up the central volcano and across the interior. For most of my ride back, I was accompanied by drizzle and then a magnificent rainbow. Unfortunately for you, I had seen so many rainbows by this point that they had actually become unremarkable (!), so there's no record of it here. When I returned to Hanga Roa, I went back to the Church, where I had attended a service on Sunday morning. More on that in a future post, once I upload the video...

Rano Raraku, the quarry for all the moai on the island, sits on the side of a volcano. All the pictures of Rano Raraku in my previous post (below) were taken on the left flank of this hill. Click to enlarge it and see the moai. They were carved out of the stone at the top and then rolled down for further work.

This is the inside of the crater, distinguished by the vegetation growth from a fresh water supply (one of only two substantial supplies on the island, the other being at Orongo).

Inside the crater, you can see archaeologically preserved sites where researchers are actually digging the moai out of their pits to understand the carving process. You can see that about two-thirds of the moai was actually under ground. Carvers would stand around it etching patterns into its back.

Again, moai rest in various stages of being carved -- this one is in the very beginnings, not even dislodged from the hill yet. Its face is in the center, pointing up.

Daniela admires the moai inside the crater.

Can you imagine smelling grass for eternity? And wouldn't it tickle your nose?

A panorama of the crater lake at Rano Raraku

Back outside the crater, I took a few extra shots that I couldn't get on my previous visit because of lighting. This is actually the largest moai ever carved, though it was never dislodged from the mountain, and probably would have broken somewhere along the way. Once a moai broke, it lost its mana (spirit) and was abandoned. Over a year's worth of work, gone.

The various reposes of moai at Rano Raraku

Two here -- one with its face on the top left, and the other in the ground, face to the right.

Back down in Tongariki, you could look inland toward the volcano of Rano Raraku.

Daniela, in the lower right, gives you a good sense of the scale of Tongariki.

Click to enlarge.

Some of the topknots that were washed inland have been lined up at the site. The topknots, a red pumice, were actually carved at a different quarry, further west on the island -- not Rano Raraku in the background.

A petroglyph of a turtle animates the site at Tongariki.

The only church on the island -- more on this to come.

Tongariki and Rano Raraku

Starting at sunrise and ending at sunset, this day offered a comprehensive survey of the history of the island, including one of the most impressive moai ahus (platforms) and a glimpse back into a mysterious moment in time. I awoke early and caught a ride with some other campers to the east side of the island for sunrise at Tongariki, one of the most impressive ahus with 15 re-erected moai facing a large field, with their backs to the sea. The sun rises behind them, and we were able to see their faint outlines gradually take form in the waxing light. This ahu is actually the largest ceremonial structure anywhere in Polynesia, measuring 22 meters long. Given that Easter Island represents the farthest reaches of early Polynesian travel (it is the eastern point on a triangle cornered by Hawa'ii on the north and New Zealand on the southwest), we're talking about a vast area of the Earth's surface. Though the moai had already been knocked over during the warring period that I wrote about below, they were done even more damage by a 1960 tsunami, during which the moai were scattered far inland. Over the next decade, a Japanese company paid over $2 million to restore the ahu. You can still see a few broken moai and far-flung topknots lying around the field. These restored moai represent the high point of carving on the island, and also represents the sheer amount of resources it would have taken to transport so many moai from their carving grounds.

Rano Raraku, a site on a volcano a mile or two from Tongariki, is where they were all carved. The quarry, like so much on the island, remains shrouded in mystery. Lying strewn about the side of the volcano are 397 moai in various stages of completion -- some just beginning to be carved, some basically done. What gives the place the feel of a living graveyard is the fact that most of the moai are half submerged in the ground, with their heads and sometimes torsos sticking out. After the moai were carved out of the volcanic rock, they were rolled down the hill into a pit, where their features were then refined and decorated. For some reason that no one quite understands, the moai were essentially abandoned there all at once, and the pits have since filled in as soil has moved downhill. It's as if the workers of the island, whose spiritual life revolved around these moai, just dropped their tools and walked away one day, never to return. What remains is a village of tilted statues, all the more compelling because they're not neatly arranged on a platform, but instead seeming to be going about their daily business.

From Rano Raraku we traveled to the north of the island, visiting the only two beaches (where I got to try out some snorkeling!) and seeing the largest moai ever transported from the quarry.

Sunrise at Tongariki

And rainbows, always rainbows.

Rano Raraku, where moai were carved out of the rock above, and then rolled down into pits for further refinement.

This guy, above and below, captured my attention. He had attitude. I called him "The Dude."

Little clusters like this are all over Rano Raraku, staring out over the island.

Tongariki as seen from Rano Raraku. The large field and former village where the tsunami scattered all the statues is toward the left.

Higher up at Rano Raraku you could see moai in the early stages of being carved out of rock.

This is the only known sitting moai.

After leaving Rano Raraku, we went to Anakena, one of two beaches on the island. Sand is rare, and this beach (behind the moai) was one of two relatively easy landing spots for canoes.

Te Pito Kura (now toppled) is the largest moai ever transported. Its topknot alone is over 2 meters high and weighs about 10 tons. The body is 10 meters and weighs over 100 tons!

We then went back to Tongariki for a view in the light of day.

You can see that the platform is significantly larger than the moai that occupy it -- several irreparable ones are still scattered about the field after the tsunami.

And finally, sunset at my campsite

The Legend of Orongo and the Birdman

I didn't know what Orongo was; I only knew that it meant walking to the crater of the volcano that formed the southwest corner of the island. I could see the grass-covered side of the volcano sloping up from my campsite, and basically just followed my nose along the coast until I found a good place to start climbing. Before I reached the base, I saw a sign for an historical site, and though I couldn't quite make out what it said, I decided to follow it. The path descended steeply down to crashing waves and a rough coastline, into a cave where the waves were deadened by an inlet. Inside the cave I saw paintings of birds on the ceiling. Little did I know then that these paintings were connected to the culture that emerged at Orongo, on the rim of the volcano where I was headed. I carried on and an hour or two later reached a high point. Crossing over a narrow ridge, I looked down on the crater itself, now one of the only sources of fresh water on the island. Inside a diversity of flora responded to the rare environment, soaking in their desalinated heaven. It is literally the most ecologically diverse place for thousands of miles. Next to me at the overlook was a etched rock encircled by other stones, with a petroglyph of another bird on it. My curiosity piqued. I followed the rim of the crater to its southern edge, overlooking the ocean 1000 feet below, where a path led further to a narrow strip of grass and terraced houses. This little village had been mostly reconstructed to represent Orongo, a ceremonial gathering place that rescued the island from chaos.

Jared Diamond talks about Easter Island in his book Collapse, citing it as an example of a civilization that overused its limited resources with no attempt to replenish them. The rush to create moai so depleted the island's natural resources that it descended into anarchy. Moai were carved out of the side of a volcano on the east side of the island (more to come on this in a future post). After they were created, they were transported to the villages that commissioned them on a system of moai roads, which were basically logs laid over the earth so that the moai could be easily rolled. The construction and maintenance of these roads essentially depleted the island of its trees. Without trees, the thin layer of topsoil eroded, making the limited farming on the island virtually nonexistent. Add this to the glut of fresh water and the ecosystem could not support the 10,000+ people that had come to inhabit the island. A fierce competition for resources began, resulting in the fracturing of tribes and eventually island-wide warfare. During the 1700s and early 1800s, every single moai on the island (several hundred at this point) were toppled by warring tribes, leaving the people devoid of their most sacred spiritual symbols (moai lost their spirit if they were toppled or broken). Tribal chiefs lost their power and the island descended into anarchy.

During this time, though, the warrior class took charge and instituted a new ritual that re-established stability and hierarchy to the fragile island. Each September, the leaders of each tribe would gather at Orongo, on this thin strip of land dropping on one side into the crater and on the other into the ocean. After several days of dancing, singing, and prayer, a representative from each tribe would embark on a perilous journey: they would climb down the crater to a notch in the ocean side, cross over to the cliff that dropped 1000 feet into the ocean, and then scale the cliff into the water below. If they didn't die doing this (and many did), they would swim 2 miles out to a little islet that had become the nesting place for migrating sooty-terns every fall. There they would camp in caves and await the terns. The first tribesman to capture an egg and signal back to his chief at Orongo would win power and tribute from all other tribes for the entire year. The tribesman then had to swim back to Rapa Nui, climb the cliff, and present the egg in tact to his chief. The victorious chief would live in isolation for the next several months. By all accounts this ritual took place until 1866, when the first Catholic missionaries came to the island. During this time, the sooty tern, representing fertility and abundance, gained in stature, and gradually displaced the moai as the primary object of worship and reverence.

The cave drawings of the bird, above and below, at an ocean-side inlet

This profile of the birdman sits at the rim of the crater. Its beak and eye are on top.

Click to enlarge these panoramas of the crater. The notch at the back is where the tribesmen would cross over and then scale the cliff to the ocean. Below, you can see the path that leads around the village of Orongo.

These are the low houses of Orongo, terraced into the hillside. Because the people spent most of their time outside, the houses were used mostly for sleeping.

This house has only been partially reconstructed, revealing the narrow inner chamber that was protected from the wind by a layer of earth.

The doorways to the houses were intentionally small to protect inhabitants from the wind, and also to make it difficult to enter without the inhabitant's permission.

In the distance is the islet where the sooty term migrated every year.

This shot shows petroglyphs on the rim of Orongo and the islet in the distance. Tribesmen basically had to climb down from here and then swim to the islet.

Close-up of the petroglyphs.