Travel
Navel of the Earth
History and Mystery Attracts People to Easter Island
Menacing. That’s the word which best expresses my feeling upon first seeing the yellow-green grass covered bluffs of Easter Island. I imagine the Dutch navigator Roggeveen must have felt the same way when he reported the island to the outside world in 1722. Since then, Easter has been the focus of many earthly — and some unearthly — theories. Most of these surround the many huge rock statues which — standing and knocked flat — litter the island.
When you land on Easter, it’s easy to see why such theories have been proposed. This is not your typical verdant foliage-covered tropical isle of Pacific dreams. It is hard-edged. The island consists mostly of open rolling hills, with occasional clumps of trees. In all, about 117 sq. km. of this terrain has been pushed up from the depths of the surrounding ocean.
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Several extinct volcanoes dominate the island. Rano Kau, at the southwestern tip, forms a promontory containing an unexpected water and plant-filled caldera. Mount Terevaka covers the northern part, rising gradually to a height of about 500 meters. The eastern tip, the legendary last refuge of the “long ears” tribe of Easter Islanders, rises as Mt. Vaia Heva. Just west of Mt. Vaia Heva is a smaller volcanic caldera, Rano Raraku. Its broken outer edge rears up like a wall over the surrounding lava fields. Most visitors walk around the outer ramparts of the volcano, for here is the famous quarry from which the Easter Island statues were carved. Here you can see some of the statues still half-carved, their bodies left in indentations in the rock.
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During the southern summer Easter has the reputation of being hot and dry. In winter, when I was there, the island is much cooler, greener — and muddy. The grass growing through the interior lava fields gives the island a fairly prosperous look. But it’s a mostly empty island today. Very few people other than tourists are seen in the interior.
What made approaching Easter by ship so foreboding was the incredibly rough shore. There is no barrier of motus here. Huge lava rocks tumbled into the sea, forming a dangerous, sometimes impenetrable barrier. Even the ancient Polynesian sailors must have had second thoughts about landing here. This is not a coast upon which you would want to launch a boat. There are only two places where ship landings can be made, at Anakena and Hanga Roa, the capital. These are both small, sheltered coves where tenders (or in some cases, Zodiac rubber life rafts) are used to transport visitors. While tenders are usually safe enough, it’s said more than one Zodiac has overturned in the rough surf.
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Besides sailing in, there’s only one other way to reach Easter. This is by the LAN-Chile flight from either Papeete or Santiago. Your jet maneuvers its way between the volcanoes onto a tiny airstrip just south of Hanga Roa, where almost all the island’s several thousand inhabitants live. Since the island is a possession of Chile, there are many people here from South America. There are also many descendants of the native Easter Islanders, who are believed to be of Polynesian blood. Most Rapa Nuians (the Polynesian name for Easter) were killed off in slave raids in the 1860’s.
The village reminds me somewhat of a rural farm town in Hawaii. Small, neat homes are hidden by walls of fruits and flowers from the dirt or brick roads. There are no tall structures. Some stores, restaurants, government offices and pensions straggle along the roads, but there are no great hotel destinations. After all, the attraction here is the history and mystery, not floor shows or swimming pools.
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Most people make a living from creating handicrafts, selling souvenirs or acting as guides. However, a visitor who reads up on the island, or gets a detailed map, doesn’t really need a guide to see the sights. A pleasant way of seeing Easter is to rent horses or motorbikes. Riding a horse across Easter’s acres is a great adventure, but if you aren’t equine-equipped, biking is also very feasible. Among the places of particular interest:
Rano Kau is a must-see. This volcano is easily accessible by a good dirt road from Hanga Roa. The road ends at the lip of the west-side of the volcano. From there it is a short walk along the edge of the caldera to a windswept point overlooking the Pacific, site of the sacred village of Orongo. Centuries ago, Orongo was the center of what anthropologists call the “birdman cult.” There is a group of small stone huts with tiny crawl-holes for entrances. Here representatives of the different tribes were chosen to live. Each year their henchmen climbed down the cliffs a few feet from the village, then swam to a group of two tiny offshore islets to pick up a bird’s egg, carry it back through the shark-infested water. The first man to return alive, egg intact, brought great honor and power to their chief (though he still had to live in one of those tiny stone enclosures).
Orongo was scarcely a princely place to live. It must have been both monotonous and dangerous. The site gets the full force of ocean breezes, and on the other side there’s a sheer drop of hundreds of feet into the Rano Kau caldera. If you listen, you can almost hear the voices of the birdmen moaning in the wind.
Near the east-end of the island, a bit inland, lies the quarry on the slopes of Rano Raraku. From this spot you can hike up the steep side of the volcano, and look into the caldera. Or you can walk along the side were dozens of statues are found in various states. Some remain planted, as they were positioned centuries ago. Others lie on their sides, perhaps toppled for some as-yet unknown reason. Some lie as if in grottos, partially carved. It seems that one day, the carvers simply dropped tools and walked away. There are pathways worn in the rock, showing where completed statues were dragged from the quarry. How that feat was accomplished is still much debated.
A short distance east of Rano Raraku is my favorite of all the statue groups, Tongariki. Here a line of fifteen statues stand on a huge stone platform. Some have separately-carved round stone topknots still on their heads. This is not necessarily how they were constructed, for Tongariki is a very perilous place. In the early 1960’s an earthquake-caused tidal wave crashed into the bay, knocking the statues off their pedestals. It’s well-restored today, however.
Menacing still? Well, maybe not. Intriguing sites, friendly people, and the real feeling of distance from the world’s cares are distinct attractions. Maybe that’s why the Rapa Nuians called this place “Navel of the Earth”. Though it was the center of their existence, it’s a long, long way from the rest of the world.
