Easter Odds and Ends

Five days I spent on Easter Island. You might well ask yourself what on earth there is to do besides look at moai. It is not that big an island, and there is only one town on it. That is the subject of this blog.

For starters, you can hike up the side of a FREAKIN EXTINCT VOLCANO (or as the literature refers to it, Rano Kau)!!! Personally, I prefer my calderas with cute little white houses built into the side, but I suppose the endangered wildlife area is a nice variation. Quite nearly as picturesque, too, although housing fewer restaurants, shops, and hot Greek men than my last extinct volcano.

While you’re there, you can check out the folk village, Orongo. This was the center of the Birdman cult, which apparently entailed strapping young men swimming out to the little craggy islands pictured below and trying to be the first one back with the egg of a migratory bird that nested there. It was a great honor, or something – the main appeal for the girls, no doubt, was in seeing the strapping lads wearing practically nothing. Or maybe that got old after a while.

Yeah. Those smallish ones out there in the water. The water with the waves. The waves that offer great surfing, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m not a surfer, although I was greatly impressed by the guys who were doing it last night, and if it’s something you’re interested in learning, you can do that here, too. You can scuba dive and snorkel as well – I meant to do that, but the company I emailed about going with told me to see them when I got in, and when I finally got around to it, they were booked up. So keep on that stuff, guys.

There are also petroglyphs scattered around the island. I didn’t see too many of them, because I honestly couldn’t be bothered clambering over large chunks of stone to get to them (I know, a terrible attitude for an art teacher to take). They are there, though, and you can learn more about them and other facets of the islands at

The Padre Sebastian Englert Museum. The good Padre was a Catholic missionary who lived (from what I could tell from the Spanish labels – I was much too lazy by that point to carry the English guide around with me) much of his life on the island and played a huge role in preserving artifacts and the native culture. And speaking of Catholics, they have a beautiful church here.

I probably like the look of this Catholic church more than any other I’ve seen. In spite of the fact that it’s clearly a Christian church, it integrates elements of Rapa Nui into its design, and it’s just a lot nicer to look at and has a warmer feel than most I’ve seen (even without the rainbow). At night it’s lit up and it makes a nice beacon in the very deep darkness of a small island alone at sea.

Also: it has Saint Birdman. I mean, come ON. I’m sure this is meant to be a representation of one of the traditional saints, but for the life of me I can’t figure out who. If, like me, you’re Mormon, there’s a place for you on Sundays, too.

This is probably the smallest branch I’ve ever attended, including the service branch we dropped in on in Pusan one weekend. They had two priesthood holders, and one was half of the senior missionary couple serving on the island. We talked for a while the night I went looking for them and the branch is actually much bigger, but…well, sometimes it’s hard to get there, and I know that as well as anybody. No matter how big or small the branch, the Spirit really is the same everywhere in the world.

You can also take your pick on how to get around the island. I took a four-wheeler out my second day (and knocked myself off it at one point but that is a story that will upset my mommy so I’m not going to give any more details than that), and a mountain bike on my third. That was fun, but hard work, and I’m basically a wuss when it comes to hills, so I walked up about as many as I rode. There are also horses you can ride, if you want to go for a lower environmental impact, and cars for rent, if you want to go higher. Whatever floats your boat…heck, you can probably even get ahold of one of those.

And finally, my second (a veeeeeery close second) favorite thing about Easter Island – the Kari Kari song-and-dance show. Oh. My. Gosh. What was that I said about it maybe getting old seeing strapping young men in practically nothing? Not possible. My action setting on my phone is, strangely enough, not as good as the one on my old camera, so I won’t bore you with a lot of half blurred shots here, but I put up one of the videos on facebook for you to check out if you don’t believe me. If I’d known it was going to be so good, I would have gone on Thursday night, as well. A lot of fun, great dancing, and gorgeous men (and women) – what more could you ask for?

Moai Madness

I walked down the hill from my hotel. I knew the sea was down there somewhere, and I knew there were some moai in town near the water. This was my first glimpse of the moai – the enigmatic watchmen of Easter Island.

And that’s enough of me trying to write nice prose for one day. I am sitting at my hotel at a quarter til ten at night. I should be a short distance from Lima right now. Instead those assholes at the Lima airport decided to go on strike so I’m stuck here nine extra hours. I thought I might put this time to good use when I saw a sign advertising a different dance troupe performing tonight, but when I went to check out where they were supposed to be, the place was all shut up, so either they’re just closed for the “winter” or they are out of business. Either way, I am back at the hotel and trying to keep myself suitably occupied. At least until the battery on my computer runs out of gas.

So – the moai. After five days here on Rapa Nui I feel I’ve gotten to know them pretty well, and yet, I’m still not tired of looking at them. On day two I rented a four-wheeler and tooled up to the north side of the island, wandering down every side path I came across and discovering that SO many of the ahu – the mounds that the moai were erected on – are unrestored. While this ahu had the most fallen moai on it, it was far from the only one. Others had only one, or none at all, which made me wonder which country ran off with the missing ones (not entirely our fault, since apparently it took the islanders a while to figure out that even though they weren’t that interested in them at the moment they shouldn’t let other people haul them off).

Eventually I got to Rano Raraku – aka, the “nursery” – the volcano from which the moai were sculpted. This was definitely the number one experience of my trip. The skies were blue, the grass was a vivid green under the late afternoon sun. The wind was blowing so hard I felt like I was going to fly off the side of the volcano at some points, and at one point it blew my camera out of my hand, although thankfully it wasn’t damaged. No one knows why the Rapa Nui just quit making the moai, but it’s a lot of fun to see them scattered around the side of the volcano – some look as though they are sleeping, some look like they are waking up, and some look like they’re about to fall over because they’ve had one too many pisco sours (they drink those here, apparently).

Although it didn’t have quite the impact of Rano Raraku, Ahu Tongariki was pretty freaking spectacular. Fifteen moai lined up together, with one more a little closer to the road, another still lying on his back, the roaring sea in the background and the delicate beauty (or so I’ve been told – I couldn’t be bothered hauling my ass up it after the previous day’s hike) of the Poike Peninsula on its other side.

Did I just go on and on about how spectacular the setting was for Ahu Tongariki? I take it back. Not only is the ahu at Anakenga Beach framed by a freaking coconut grove, this is supposedly the beach where the first explorer king of Easter Island, Hotu Matu'a, landed. Talk about historic settings. It’s also the best beach on the island and in summer time supposed to be a pretty happening place to be. Go in summertime, people. Actually, don’t just go in summertime – go in February for the Tapati Rapa Nui festival. I wish I could have come here then. But that has nothing to do with the moai…

Note those big blocky pieces of reddish colored lava? Apparently they are some kind of stylized hairstyle. And something I didn’t really know was that the moai were not always blind – fragments of eyes were found. This one has had his vision miraculously restored.

Let me finish with one last ahu – yet another Easter Island mystery – Ahu Akivi. This is the only ahu constructed inland (I know – to get to it I biked up the coast and then had to go inland a ways over rocky roads that would have put the dirt tracks near my grandparents’ farm to shame). It also faces out to sea, rather than inland. Why? Apparently no one knows.

Rainbow Connection

I've been on Rapa Nui (otherwise known as Easter Island or, if you habla espanol, Isla de Pascua) four days now, and this is the first chance I've really had to sit down and write something about the experience. My hotel, which advertised itself as having wifi, doesn't necessarily have wifi that WORKS, so only now, when I'm kind of getting bored (note: five days on a small, windswept Polynesian-cum-South American island is too much. Three would have been plenty), have I decided it's worthwhile to lug the computadora down the street to the one restaurant I've found that has complimentary wifi. So here I am.

Okay, so, it's taking forever to upload that one photo, so we'll do fewer pics with this post. Basically, after a short nap (I took the red-eye from Lima, and arrived shortly after 7 a.m.) I left my room to grab a bite to eat and was dismayed to find out that those damned weathermen had been correct - it was raining. It slowed and stopped (I've come to realize this is a pattern here), and I set out in search of my first moai. I came to them, at Ahu Tahai, just as it started raining, which did NOT make me very happy. I begged Heavenly Father to make it stop, and it did - eventually. Which was great. Then the sun pushed its way out of the clouds, and lo and behold, a rainbow appeared over my new friends. The same thing happened yesterday.

Now, I'm not all that fond of getting rained on, especially not while wielding a $600 phone/camera. But without the rain, you can't have rainbows. I believe in God, that there is a governing force in the world, and that sometimes we have to deal with something less than wonderful in order for something beautiful to happen. I realize this is true even if you don't believe in God (to save those who don't the trouble of pointing it out to me). Nevertheless, I was happy for the reminder to be patient in my trials...and for the beautiful pictures.