Secret Birdman

We’re not bad people really but sometimes circumstances take over. At 7am, too early even for breakfast, we found ourselves ready for our mission. To sneak into the Birdman Cult site before the ranger turned up and therefore get out of paying. Using the last few hours on our hire jeep we flew up the dirt track to the lip of the huge crater.

A couple of days before, we’d managed to walk all the way to the Orongo Crater, had a lovely look around and took some fancy panoramic photos. We saw a fenced off bit with a booth and thought, why on earth would we want to go in there, we’ve seen the crater in all its glory. Don’t need to pay for that! It was only later I realised that fenced off bit was just one of the most famous places in the island! If you’ve seen the Kevin Kostner film you’d definitely want to go there for sure.

Getting to the end of the track we were in luck, no one there, and no ranger yet. As the chill early morning mists cleared we sneaked through the turn style. It was getting late, nearing 8am, when I assumed the ranger might turn up. Signs everywhere said don’t enter without a guide etc etc. No Entry, Pay Here. We had no excuse this time. It must have been a funny sight. We literally pegged it around the site. Stopping the briefest moment to snap pics here and there then we were out of there. Sprinting back across the exposed path back past the ticket booth. We made it!

There’s a massive steep cliff down there. According to the film the participants had to scramble down, swim across to the island. Find the first egg of the season of this special bird. Strap it to their head and swim/scramble back. The first to deliver it intact to the chief wins and the person they are running for becomes the birdman and chief of the island.

Bleedin’ Scooters

Slightly embarrassing I have to say. Easter Island, and we’d planned to do the big North East circuit of the island today. Quite a way so we’d need a scooter or some such. So, over breakfast, the hostel ordered a scooter for us. The scooter bloke turned up, I filled in the paperwork. We went out to try it out. I drove it into a hedge first, then crashed it into a big hard wall and ended up underneath it. Scooter bloke said we should walk. Never liked him in the first place anyway!

Anyway, apart from the bruises and bit of blood it all worked out OK. We got a lovely 4×4 with aircon and had a brilliant day. Scooters are stupid.

Easter Island!!!!

I’ve been looking forward to this all trip. The most remote inhabited place on Earth. 3700km from Chile, the nearest neighbor at 2000km away is the tiny Pitcairn Islands where the Bounty mutineers were marooned and their descendents still live. Until 1722, when Europeans turned up, the inhabitants of Easter Island thought they were the only people on Earth, the history of their Polynesian origins in 400AD lost long ago.

Even more bizarrely maybe, the origins and reasons for building the huge stone heads (Moai) the island is famous for have also been lost. Bizarre because this started in 800AD but only stopped around 1680 just before European contact. All knowledge about building them, moving them and why they were made seems to have vanished. By 1680 a new society had emerged after a huge conflict during which every single Moai was toppled over. That society was based on the Birdman cult centered around the Orongo crater (above) and resulted from the need for all the different clans that waged war on each other during the conflict to live together if the depleted resources of the island were to go around. That lasted until 1864 when Catholic missionaries arrived.

There’s a film about it all produced by Kevin Costner. We watched it in the closest thing there is to a cinema on the island (it’s on most nights!) It’s pretty entertaining if you’re on Easter Island but probably factually way out eg. Moai building going on during the birdman cult. Outrageous!

Easter Island is stunning, Kath’s new favorite place in the world and possibly mine too. By far my favorite place was the quarry where they all came from. This is such a strange place. Amazingly, so far 887 Moai have been found on the island. Only 288 have been moved to their ceremonial platforms, 397 are still in the quarry or are only half carved and strangest of all (to see anyway) 92 are on their way from the quarry to their platforms. That is truly on of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.

I loved the single solitary heads especially when I went for a little wander on my own on the last day with the crashing sea behind them and the overcast sky above.

Various expeditions have restored Moai back up on their platforms, the biggest of which was a Japanese project to put these back…

and a smaller one to restore these, the only ones that look into the setting sun. The rest all look inland towards where settlements would have been away from the sea.

The guidebook said you only need 3 days here. That’s rubbish, we had 5 plus two half days and still didn’t get to see everything. Sure you could see the highlights from a tour minibus easily in that time. If I hadn’t walked those many many kilometers and explored those nooks and crannies, traipsed across that wild brush landscape I’d feel pretty upset at leaving somewhere I’m probably never going to come back to.