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.