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Easter Island
28 September 2006
Rapa Nui is the last Polynesian Island on our route. Is totally different from the others. First, it is the only a small island, not archipelago. It is also extremely remote - to the nearest inhabited island (Pitcairn Islands) is more than 2,000 km, to Tahiti more than 3,700 km. This isolation has left so many questions unanswered about the life of its inhabitants. There are many theories, but none has been proven.
The biggest unknown is placed on the coast of the ocean huge stone statues, called Moai (up to 10 meters high). But something had to happen, because at some time working in a quarry on the statues has been stopped, abandoned the statues that have already been transported from a quarry on the coast, and these had already been standing, fall down. So far, no one knows why.
In recent decades, a dozen statues were set up in their altars to their original positions, part of them were restored. On the island there are more than 800 Moais, most of them never touch from the centuries. I agree with saying that this is the world's largest open air museum.
In addition to viewing standing statues please do not miss "Moais factory" in the Rano Raraku volcano.
Here hewed giant from the stone, and later were transported to the entire island. Some lie, others are half buried in the ground, they look exactly as suddenly one day work stopped.
Orongo is the reproduction of the village, where we can see how its inhabitants lived. Houses were built on the edge of a volcano crater, where on both sides steep cliff dropping straight into the water. It is worth to come here even just for the same scenery.
Easter Island we decided to explore on foot, walking for 3 days, sleeping in a tent where dusk found us (unfortunately camp outside the town of Hanga Roa is illegal, but we didn't know that). It was a very interesting and pleasant time to stroll through the nearly treeless island.
Rapa Nui belongs to Chile, so we used the only possible connection to the east, to Santiago. There, for a variety, we hiking shortly in the high Andes and took the flight to another island, this time Caribbean one.