Chile

Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui or Isla de Pascua) is about a 5 hour flight west of Santiago in the Pacific Ocean. It is commonly referred to as the loneliest place in the world due to its remoteness. The nearest populated places are Chile and Tahiti, some 3500km away. It is best known for the giant stone monoliths, known as moai, that dot the coastline. Admiral Roggeveen, who discovered the island on Easter Day in 1722, named it Easter Island.

The runway on the island has been improved by NASA to enable space shuttles to land there in an emergency. It is the longest runway in the southern hemisphere at 4 km long.

The day we arrived was wonderfully hot and humid without any wind. We managed to arrange accommodation with one of the locals at the airport. She took us to her mother's house (Residencial Tahai) in a big tropical garden. We stayed there for 6 nights and spend much time with our new friend from the UK, Paul that arrived later the same night.

The next day we went on a tour with a local guide called Patricio (family of the people where we stayed). He was absolutely brilliant and our group was wonderful as it only consisted out of the two of us and Paul. We were surprised to find so few people touring the sites and we were almost always on our own.

Patricio took us to the most important sites around the island. We were surprised to learn that there were 887 moais in total! Many of them are unfinished and left in the quarry. There were also many completed moais around the quarry waiting to be transported. Only their heads are now visible, as soil erosion buried the bottom 2/3 of their bodies.The tallest moai is 22m and weighs about 180 tons! An average moai would be over 4m tall and weigh 14 tons.

We visited many moais, cave homes, tombs (with actual bones in), the quarry (Raku Raraku) where they were carved, Tongariki (a set of 15 moais restored by the Japanese after a tsunami washed them inland), a stone called the "navel of the world" and the only proper beach on the island.

Patricio explained the various views on the history of the island. It seems as if the increasing demand on the environment (no more trees, no more boats to fish, etc) eventually let to the collapse of this society. But this is only one possible view as many archaeologists still disagree...

There is still so much that will probably never be known, such as:
- where did the islanders originally come from?
- why did they carve these massive stone statures?
- what does the writing on the rongo-rongo tablets mean (mysterious writings carved out on wooden tablets that were originally in every house)?
- what exactly lead to the fall of this civilization?
- and probably the most difficult question to answer - how did they as a primitive people manage to move hundreds of moai weighing an average of 14tons over up to 25km?

One early morning, Paul and ourselves, walked for about 20km along the northern and western coast of the island discovering for ourselves. Many new and interesting archaeological sites were given names during our excursion. Harry's village and Harry's stone are probably the most noteworthy discoveries we made.

We relaxed and enjoyed our time with Paul and Francios (a french traveller staying at our digs). On Tuesday 25 April, we flew back to Santiago after a wonderful cultural experience.