Moai at sunrise

Day 204 – Hanga Roa, Easter Island, Chile

I started the day with a sunrise tour at Ahu Tongariki, where 15 Moai turn their back to the sea – and the rising sun.

It is obviously a favoured spot, as a few other buses and quite a few cars were also filling the parking lot.

We arrived just before the opening of the gate, our tickets were checked, and zou we could approach the statues. Well, always keeping a certain distance, because the Moai are erected on platforms the public is not allowed to tread on, and considering I learned later during the day that the platforms are burial places, it makes sense.

Being part of a crowd means that there is always someone getting closer to the point of interest to take closer pictures and stepping right into you line of view, fortunately, 15 Moai means that you have to step back quite a distance to have them all, so mostly it was manageable.

The morning was cloudy, so we got little sun right when it was supposed to peek over the horizon. And then we got a downpour. Obviously, based on the heat and gentle rain showers of the previous days, I wasn’t prepared for it, so when I got back to the shelter of the bus, I was half-drenched (on the side facing the wind). I still got a better deal than the other passengers who were farther than me from the bus -or who waited longer.

The bus driver, obviously a veteran of such events, took us on the bit of the road that faced the Moai (from way farther away) and let us take pictures through the open side door of the sun fighting its way over the clouds. Finally when he made a U-turn farther away before coming back the same way, the rain had stopped, and he parked to let us take some new pictures (again).

So I must have dozens of pictures of the same view, with hardly any difference in the height of the sun, but well. That’s tourism for you. And since we’re not supposed to be staring directly at the sun, looking through a camera digital screen allows one to still appreciate the sunrise without burning one’s retinas.

On the way back, we had to manoeuvre around wild horses and cows that find the road a convenient place to hang around.

I had booked a half-day tour after that through the same company, and I elected to wait at the office for the next bus instead of being dropped off and picked up again. (I could have, and change clothes at the same time, but I was half-way dry anyway, so…)

And on we went. We went first to two platforms with toppled and broken Moai. That’s where, through the guide, I learned so much about them.

So during centuries upon centuries, the Polynesian people living here worshipped their ancestors, in particular the royal families that were ruling the villages. The kings and their families were buried in the platforms (which needed enlargement with time!), and statues representing the kings were erected on the platforms.

It’s difficult to date the beginning of the practice, because broken statues (through nature or wars) were replaced, the broken bits used to expend the platforms, so through generations of work a “young” Moai could represent a very ancient ancestor.

The Moai face the village they are protecting. Their back is engraved with the Rapa Nui language, giving knowledge to the future generations. Only the royal family was allowed to walk behind the statues to read it. The big eyes of the Moai, of coral white and obsidian pupils, allow the mana (spirit) of the ancestor to inhabit the statue, and thus to stay here and protect the village.

That’s why during tribal wars, you topple and break your opponent’s Moai. It’s why also it is believed that by taking the statues away (let’s not mention foreign museums), the mana is also taken with them.

During the 17th century, the tribes of the island united against a single tribe who was apparently stealing children from the other tribes to eat them (yummy!), and destroyed it. (Well, on such a small island, the resources are finite, and when you have felled all the trees, cannot build new canoes to fish, and depend on chicken for wealth, conflicts arise.)

In the aftermath, the tribes were united by a leader who led a change from the ancestor worship to the bird-man worship. It’s a meld of fertility rituals, rite of passage, and competition to become the overall chief, but over the years, the annual Birdman contest determined who would lead the tribes for a year.

The tribes would train their champions over the year; when a sea bird would arrive from its annual migration to lay eggs on three inlets, South of the island, the tribes would gather on the coast (on the edge of a volcano crater overlooking the sea), and the champion would run to the lowest side of the crater, climb down to the sea, swim the 1.5 km to the biggest inlet on a reed raft, wait for the bird to lay eggs, steal one, announce their return by yelling into an amplifying cave, swim back with the egg tied in a headband for protection, climb back on the crater edge and run back to the priests. The first to come back and present an unbroken egg would be the winner.
So you cull the weak, unite the tribes, and stop the costly ancestor worship.

The visit ended at Orongo village, the place where the Birdman contest took place, which overlooks the crater Rano Kau and the islands needed for the contest.

After these adventures, I went back for a deserved nap. I still found the courage to go back out for the sunset. The dog -my Faithful Companion- was already there and overjoyed to meet with me again.

Well, I didn’t have anything to give him, so his interest waned quickly, but still.
And the next day I went on a full day tour…!

(As usual, pictures in the gallery.)