Rapa Nui

What better way could there be to spend Easter weekend than a trip to Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as the locals call it. Three friends and I took the opportunity to turn a 3 day weekend into a 5 day weekend and headed west. Thursday morning was a bit of a nightmare as a result of a mechanical problem on our flight. A 9:15 departure turned into a 6:30 PM departure ruining our first afternoon on the island. Four days on the island turned out to be enough time, however to see everything on the island.

We started off by venturing to the volcano at Orongo on Friday morning. At the top of the volcano, you can actually look down and see inside. The volcano has been dormant for a long time, so now there is just a calm lake in the crater. It was really pretty! There were also all these old boat-shaped houses where the native Rapa Nui people used to stay during their annual Birdman contest. Legend has it that they would collect all of the island's virgins at the top of the volcano and bring in a gynecologist to examine them to ensure that they were actually virgins. Once they passed the "test" they were taken to a cave for 8 months to lighten their skin so that they were fit to marry the winner of the Birdman contest.

We spent the afternoon touring the island looking at the giant heads. The heads were constructed between 800 and 1500 AD by the native Rapa Nui people, who most likely are of Polynesian decent. They were so obsessed with the construction of the statues that they exhausted all of the resources on the island to the point of near extinction. After a tiring day of hiking and sight-seeing, we bought some wine and perched atop a cliff to watch the sunset.

Saturday morning, we woke early to head out for scuba diving. The water in Easter Island, according to my Fodor's guide, is arguably the clearest water in the world. The dive shop we went through for the dive had positioned a fake Moia underwater for divers to take photographs with. It was run by some funny French men, which turned out to be in our favor, since Sole and Roxane (two of my travel-mates) speak fluent French. I don't know that they would have had a slot for us otherwise, since we didn't book until the day before!

The afternoon and following day were filled with more statue-viewing and touring around the island. We visited the quarry where the Rapa Nui people carved the statues. In the quarry, there are still 397 statues in various stages of carving. Only 288 of the 887 total statues ever actually made it to their platforms, or "ahus" to be erected. Another 92 statues have been found between the quarry and their final destination, left behind after the Rapa Nui ran out of the resources required to get them where they were meant to be. What a pity! We also visited the island's small museum to brush up on some history (including the facts detailed in this paragraph). We watched the sunset on Anakena beach on Sunday evening while enjoying more Chilean wine.