Rapa Nui!  Here in Latin America it’s better known as Isla de Pascua.  But in the language of the inhabitants it is Rapa Nui.  Or Te Pito o Te Henua, The Navel of the World. 

 

You probably know it as Easter Island. 

 

It is tiny.  Only 117 square kilometers.  But it has an airport that was designed for a space shuttle landing.  Just in case!  Because it is the most isolated inhabited spot in the world.  It’s nearest neighbor is the even tinier Pitcairn Island, 1900 km to the west.

 

Although this island has been Chilean territory since 1888, it has much more in common culturally with the islands of Polynesia.  Most archeologists believe that the inhabitants are Polynesians, of Asian ancestry.  But Thor Hyderdall postulated that the inhabitants were actually of Latin American ancestry, sailing the 3700 km from the South American coast to Rapa Nui in balsa and reed boats like those used on Peru and Bolivia’s Lake Titicaca.  And Hyderdall even went so far as to sail from South America to Rapa Nui in his famous Kon Tiki expedition, at least proving that his theory was a possible explanation of the roots of the inhabitants of Rapa Nui.

 

But no matter the ancestry, when Europeans first landed on the island in 1774, they found a rich culture with a hieroglyphic writing inscribed on stone ‘rongo-rongo’ tablets and towering stone ‘moai’ statues with stone ‘pukao’ head dresses sitting on massive stone ‘ahu’ platforms. 

 

However, at that time, the Rapa Nui population was experiencing problems. Overpopulation and dwindling natural resources had already placed the inhabitants on a very unstable foundation .  Then, as has proven to be the case so often, European contact nearly destroyed the Rapa Nui people.  From a population of about 15,000 inhabitants, the numbers plummeted to just several  hundred as a result of slave raids and small pox.  Today, the 2800 inhabitants are a proud people, holding fast to their traditions and placing appropriate limits to tourism and development.

 

This island itself is roughly triangular in shape, with volcanos at each of the three corners.  In between there are fertile grass plains interspersed with rough lava fields.  There are no permanent streams!  And erosion upon the shoreline by the Pacific Ocean has created towering lava cliffs around nearly all of the island. 

 

Early in my time here, I climbed up to Orango, an ancient stone village high atop the western-most volcano of the island.  Here, each year, a festival was once held.  The young men of each of the family tribes would climb 311 meters down the cliffs from Orango to the Pacific Ocean.  They would then swim out to one of the nearby ‘motu’ (islets) to retrieve an egg from a nest of a bird called the sooty tern. They then gently tied the egg to their forehead for the return swim and climb back to Orango.  The winning ‘birdman’ won great favor with the god Makemake.  And his family tribe was permitted to live in the incredible village of Orango until the next year’s festival. 

 

But, perhaps Rapa Nui is more famous for it’s incredible moai statues.  These statues were erected by the different family tribes of the island to honor their ancestors.  All but one site is on the coast with the moai placed facing inland.  The people of Rapa Nui carved these statues up until about 300 years ago.  Then the carving of moai stopped.  For many of the statues the process of carving stopped in mid stroke!  Perhaps this was due to the environmental crisis which the island appeared to be facing in this same time frame.

 

I visited countless sites on the island where the moai stood impressively on their massive ahu platforms on a cliff towering above the ocean.  I saw these moai with their incredible red stone pukao head dresses resting upon their heads. 

 

I found isolated beaches where the cliffs surrounding the island briefly gave way to the gentle sands. 

 

I sat for hours overlooking the cliffs and the ocean as the flowing waters gently but persuasively, through incredible determination, carried the much harder rock out to rest on the ocean bottom. 

 

I explored lava tube caves, meandering under the earth.  These caves were once flowing rivers of lava!  Now they are hollow tubes, just inviting you to climb in and explore. 

 

I watched as the ocean pounded the shore line, finding lava tubes in which to flow.  Then the ocean would explode from the earth several meters inland, where the lava tube had a vent to the earth’s surface! 

 

And I saw the belly button of the world!  It is an incredible large, perfectly rounded stone sitting on the coast on the northeast shore of the island.  Local legend is that it truly is the navel of the world!

 

But for me, most incredible of all was Ranu Raraku, the nursery where the massive statues were carved from the sides of a volcano.  Here I saw huge statues seeming to rise out of the very earth.  The tallest moai ever placed upon its ahu platform was 10 meters high.  But here in the nursery there is an unfinished moai that measures 21 meters!  I saw lines of moai in stop action, advancing down the sides of the volcano.  They began the incredible  journey across the island to be placed upon their ahu platform over three hundred years ago.  Only to be stopped in mid trip as the culture of the island came under environmental and cultural attack.  And as you sit and marvel at this incredible sight, you cannot help but wonder how these massive stone statues could be moved across this rough terrain.

 

Local legend is that the moai moved across the island by the magical ‘mana’ power of the priests.  Moving a little bit each day.  Modern archeologists instead tend to hypothesis about things like sledges and wooden runners.  I just don’t know.  You see, when you are in a place like this, sitting on a lava cliff looking upon a line of moai standing stoically as the sun sets over that ocean that goes on forever, you tend to believe in the magic of mana instead!