Easter Iceland

Radharc


La Chascona discovers treasure on Easter Island

Just back from Isla de Pascua / Easter Island (or Easter Iceland as the air hostess pronounced it) – one of the most isolated islands on earth. It’s the furthest either of us has been from home – almost exactly half way round the world. A 30 minute trip to the airport turned into an 11 minute Dodi and Diana style race through the streets of Santiago at dawn. As I’m writing this from our room in Bellavista hostel at around midnight I’m hearing faint horns from the jazz club down the street floating through the window mixed with the sound of an elephant at the San Cristobel zoo up the road blowing his own trumpet. Anyone remember Hamilton that crazy cartoon elephant who would break into a jazz trumpet solo at the drop of a hat? From what I’m hearing at the moment, it sounds like elephants do actually like jazz – or at least have an adverse reaction to it. So we checked in over 3 hours early because we’d heard that LAN airlines regularly overbooks these twice weekly flights to Easter Island. Turns out the flight was delayed which meant we were sitting around in departures for close on 5 hours.

Baby Airport on Easter Island

I had bought some much coveted and hard to find magazines in English and M had her portfolio of paperbacks amassed from some canny trading at the bookswaps in the various hostels we’ve been staying in, so there was no real stress. We were convinced that our empty gas canisters and sealed bottle of gas for our stove had been discovered in our rucksacks and that the “technical problems” mentioned as the reason for the delay in the updates over the PA was in reality a bomb scare where mugshots of our heavily pregnant rucksacks would feature prominently. Only when our bags came trundling towards us up the conveyor belt in Rapa Nui did we know we were safe. The five and a half hour flight over was fine – we both slept a lot after a late night and a very early morning to catch the flight. It’s funny how a flight to a tiny island 4000km off the coast of a country and halfway to Tahiti is still classified as an internal flight.

Santiago street entertainer and some guy on stilts

The landing was pretty interesting. We descended out of zero visibility cloud and when we eventually cleared the fog all I could see out the window was the choppy surface of the sea. But the landing gear was down, the plane was angled to land, the engines were making thoughtful landing noises and the cabin crew were all perched in their landing positions – but where was the land? Suddenly, you could see some rocks jutting up out of the sea followed almost immediately, as if by magic, by a tarmac runway. We were literally landing on a cliff top. For some reason, which neither of us can explain, we both thought that Easter Island was going to be cold. We had heard about the constant rain and seen weather forecasts for thunderstorms and given the fact that we were going to be camping I think we over compensated by packing only warm and waterproof clothes. How wrong we were. We got off the plane dressed in windstoppers and raincoats and were hit with 25 degree heat and stifling humidity. Neither of us had brought shorts or swimming gear. We improvised out of neccessity with those dodgy trousers that you can turn into unflattering short shorts using only the power of zippers. By the time we’d rescued our luggage and picked up our little jeep, I was in desperate need of a towel and some air conditioning. Our little jeep provided neither. We checked in to our campsite which was like a seafront version of one of the Byrne’s houses in Clongorey, a rambling one storey house of mixed heritage with several haphazard extensions peeping out from under its skirts sitting on an acre of a front garden full of weeds, horses, car parts ……and tents. But the important bit is seafront – when we arrived the waves crashing onto the rocky shore 40 feet from where we pitched our tent were HUGE, Hawaii Huge and it made for a dramatic introduction to island life.


We had the tent pitched in minutes and were back in the jeep eager to spot our first moai. The island forms a pretty small triangular shape, something like 25km long by 20km wide, interestingly with an extinct volcano in each corner. We had thought about walking the island and had even picked up a trekking map to guide us. But seeing as we only had 3 full days we decided to hire the jeep to make sure that we got the most out of our once in a lifetime island adventure.

Breakfast on Easter Sunday morning (with luggage friendly eggs)

We had done a load of research before we came over and were absolutely intrigued by the mysterious history not to mention the archaeology – patchy and all as it is- of the place. We were particularly fascinated as most people are by the enigmatic and stern volcanic stone statues (the moai) which have made this tiny island world famous. There are over 600 moai on the island, some upto 9 metres in height.

M finally gets to meet one of her heroes

It is believed that the island was first inhabited between 1200 and 1600 years ago by the same crazy Polynesians who first inhabited Hawaii and New Zealand – which makes absolute sense when you see their tribal tattoos, hear their language being spoken (their words have a vowel to consonant ratio of 100:1) and witness the physical resemblance to the New Zealand Maori and native Hawaiians. These incredibly ambitious settlers, from their base in Tonga and Samoa, spread themselves over thousands of miles onto some of the most widely distributed rocky island outposts on the planet, travelling only in double hulled canoes laden down with human cargo, animals and plants. Their adventures make our relocation to Vancouver seem like a move to the next parish on the back of a Honda 50.

Hello Boss!

Due to the climate and soil conditions on this volcanic island, the range of crops which would grow sustainably was very limited. So their diet would have been pretty monotonous. The side effect of lack of effort required to grow food was that they had a huge amount of time to devote to creating and developing their ceremonial activities – an integral component of Polynesian life. I came to a similar conclusion wandering the island. These people were basically in the back of beyond with nothing to do – essentially unemployed. So these carved stone monolithic wonders are the fruit of their labours on the Polynesian equivalent of a Fás course (I think it was called Anco back then). What other reason could there possibly be for this steady production line of back breakingly huge stone monuments, painstakingly hacked from mountains? It wasn’t for fun they were doing it. So it must have been to get them out of the scratcher in the mornings. I wonder will the rockeries, ornate archways to nowhere and mini monuments completed on Fás courses around Newbridge still be around and revered by academics and tourists alike in a couple of millennia. One doubts it. But back to reality….

M's unconvincing moai impression (and Zipper technology demo)

There is much mystery surrounding the moai. Why were they made? What do they represent? How exactly were they transported from the quarry where they were sculpted and how were they erected? What’s the significance of the minor differences in markings and size of features? Minimal information survives about this tragic civilisation which was all but decimated following the island’s “discovery” by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722. Slave traders from Peru raided the island in 1805 and made several plundering expeditions thereafter capturing upto 3000 of the natives to bring to work as slaves on plantations around their colonies and mines. Most of the islanders died under the appalling work conditions. Of those who survived, most were too weak to survive the voyage back home when they were ordered to be repatriated by the Bishop of Tahiti of all people. Those that did survive, in a tragic twist, ended up infecting the remaining islanders with smallpox and TB. After all this the population on the island had plummeted from a mid 1500AD high of approximately 8000 healthy inhabitants to less than 100. The traditions and history of the islanders were wiped out along with its people, some of whom were high chiefs who alone had access to specialist knowledge about the culture and their traditions.

Tomás Mac Rapa Nui? Anseo!

Later, missionaries determined to bring faith to these forlorn souls actively destroyed their old wooden sculptures, religious artefacts and most importantly the Rongo-Rongo tablets (which surpisingly isn't a euphemism for disco biscuits) which were the only surviving record of the native language of the Rapa Nui, thereby debatably doing more damage than the slave traders. In addition to the destructive outside influences, there is evidence to suggest that the culture went through a period of very destructive infighting between the local clans. The most damaging effect of these battles was the toppling of the moai, each clan upending the handiwork of the other, and desecrating the statues further by smashing the ornate coral eyes. No surviving moai has its eyes intact although samples of fragmented eyes exist in the museum on the island. An expedition to Easter Island in the late 19th century reported that there were no moai left standing anywhere on the island. Hundreds of these tall, proud sculptures, some of them broken in two, lay toppled face down across the landscape like warrior casualties of some great stoneage battle. Over the past half century or so, several have been resurrected by multi national archaeological teams. Interestingly this tiny culture’s bizarre obsession with sculpting these huge statues eventually directly resulted in the irreversible deforestation of the island as massive tracts of delicate local forests were felled to provide the trees used to transport these stone behemoths to their final locations around the coast. This turned the island into a wasteland with the erosion of the exposed soil making the growing of crops far more difficult and depriving the islanders of the raw materials required to construct shelter or build the fishing or sailing boats they so badly required to support their lifestyle. So, it would appear that by hook or by crook, whether it be at the hands of slave traders, missionaries or as the result of self inflicted ecological damage to their environment, this tiny civilisation, rich with knowledge, ceremony and ritual, and responsible for creating some of the most intriguing historical artefacts ever discovered, were doomed by fate to an ignominious demise.


Our first visit in beepbeep (nannad’s jeep) was to Rano Raraku, the quarry where the moai were carved in-situ from the mountainside and where the most photographed moai reside. There’s still a lot of moai sitting half carved in the mountainside or completed and deposited upright in pits at the base of the quarry awaiting transportation to their final resting place. Obviously, for whatever reason (some were simply too large to move, some say that the money the chiefs were paying the labourers and craftsmen simply ran out – the other likely possibility being that the breakdown of society following the slave traders’ visits depleted the workforce to such an extent that the work simply stopped) they never made it.




Getting a feel for the sheer size of these things was interesting. These Rapa Nui stoneworkers were master craftsmen, using the resources which the quarry provided to their maximum. Some of the half carved moai are carved perpendicular to the ground, some parallel – depending on the quality of the rock and the presence or absence of faults in the soft volcanic raw material.

Moai in progress

The standing moai were the most impressive though as it was our first sighting of these mesmerising anthropomorphic rock sculptures in the flesh…. so to speak. We were both very surprised to discover that the majority of these heads were also carved with tiny little hands joined over their bellies. Some even had tattoos carved into their asses. It sounds strange to say but all of the moai seemed to have their own personality. Subtle differences in features, a larger nose, a stronger chin, the shape of the mouth made each one look a little different, some in better mood than others. One in particular looked a lot like Guy Smiley from Sesame Street, others had carvings on them very reminiscent of Elmo from Sesame Street causing us to wonder at Jim Henson’s inspiration Whether or not the moai had long ears or short ears is seen as very significant as it indicated which clan or tribe commissioned that particular statue. We both had our favourites and I totally would have brought one home with me but for the fact that we’re extremely overweight with our luggage already and adding an extra 30 tonnes would have just been stupid.

A horse doing a convincing watercolour impression

Next stop was Orongo. Orongo is a village ruins at the rim of the crater at Rano Kau high above the island. Apparently the village was only used once a year (at the September equinox) by the high priests and chiefs of the island for a strange ritual indeed, the Birdman Ritual. This involved a competition between the chiefs of the island to find the first egg of the sooty tern on a small islet just off the coast of Easter Island.

Ranu Kao

The competitors had to first descend the steep cliff face from Orongo down into the crashing waves of the shark infested ocean hundreds of feet below and then swim the 2km across to the island, have a root around for the elusive sooty tern’s egg and transport the egg back intact to the high priests. It could take anything up to 2 weeks for the lucky contestant to return with the egg. In the meantime the priests would hang out in Orongo performing ritual dances and prayers. The victorious chief now became the birdman for the next year. This dubious honour comes with the requirement that your head and eyebrows be shaved. The birdman is then taken to a secluded location at the base of the volcano where he was to remain in strict solitary confinement for his full year of office. The real benefits accrued to his kinsmen who became the bona fide governors of the island for the year. Then they’d start all over again the following year. It’s a pretty spectacular way to relieve boredom. You really have got to admire their imagination. The Birdman Cult as it’s called eventually overtook the statue cult as the predominant religion on the island. There’s also further evidence of them using more macabre methods to relieve the boredom in their diet. Cannibalism was not uncommon on the island – humans being the only potential meal-mammals available to the islanders. There’s disagreement over whether or not the cannibalism stemmed from the requirement for human sacrifice in some of their rituals or whether it was just a case of fancying a bit of meat for a change.

We visited Anakena beach the apparent original landing spot of the original islanders and thus a very sacred spot. We eventually found another really secluded beach Ovahe beach and had a lovely picnic there one of the days in complete isolation.


So all in all it was a pretty magical experience. Even without knowing a thing about the history of the place and its people the island has an incredible eerie charm which stays with you for your entire visit. We were blessed with several of the sites in that we had them completely to ourselves. Tourbuses full of happy snappers would sometimes descend en masse turning the sites into raving anthills of appropriately dressed westerners just after we left. Tourbuses take a north-south route and by taking a south-north route you can time your visits to avoid bumping into the crowds. Post-Post Edit: great article here.

Mareike and M

We bumped into a nice Belgian girl at our campsite aswell. Marieke was on the final leg of a round the world journey and she accompanied us on a hike up one of the volcanoes and on a couple of days touring the island. We rescued her the first day from a gruelling uphill she was having trouble negotiating on her crappy hired bike. We spent the evenings chatting over wine and massive packets of crisps (while a group of Japanese prepared 13 course banquets using both kitchens) about each of our adventures and plans for future travel. We’ve told her we’ll move into her house in Belgium no strings attached. She said she’d get back to us.

The contents of my handbag

We returned to Santiago back to the excellent Bellavista hostel. This place is absolutely amazing, far and away the best and most well kitted out hostel we’ve stayed in yet. It’s jam packed full of those creature comforts required for the addled backpacker to unwind after long nights drinking or mornings bullshitting about their adventures real or imagined (cue heavy Glasgow accent….. "we’re going to Bolivia to live with pumas for a month" - true story. )

Over smoggy Santiago

We’ve had the most fun we’ve had in months on the hostel’s Fussball table. I was winning every single game until M figured out I was upending her goalie before every kickoff so that he'd just watch the ball go under his legs every time I directed anything vaguely goalwards. There’s also a massive widescreen plasma TV, a gorgeous blue pool table, loads of free internet and wifi and all in a couple of adjacent old buildings 10 minutes walk from downtown Santiago. We had our incredibly spacious double room in a gorgeous old house and basically we’ve been holed up here for close to a week living in a place that's as close to a home as we've had for a while.

Home sweet shelfspace

We hadn’t planned on staying quite this long in Santiago as we’d heard it can be a pretty dull town in a constant state of smog smotherment. But it has been very good to us. We hooked up with Riva Hazelkorn the Princeton Architect we met on the W (she lives in Santiago teaching English) and went for Japanese food and Jazz one of the nights and to a party at a gay dancer’s house / dance studio the next night It was actually a lot more fun than it sounds – there was a OAP couple entertaining the revellers with pretty arthritic Tango displays until 5 in the morning. M even got up to dance with the old guy for a set of hilarious utter Tango chaos. At home the rowdy senior couple would have been carted out in an ambulance at midnight.

The photo they didnt want you to see : Santiago Shoeshop

On the other hand, there’s very little worse than bad jazz. Santiago has a reputation for being a bit of a jazz hotspot. Personally I don’t think the Latin Americans are laid back enough to pull it off and Friday nights display of overweight Latinos with beer bellies and prescription sunglasses competitively blowing animal noises out of their instruments seemed to confirm it. But it was a good night of mojitos, liver with raspberry sauce finger food, unflattering cross cultural observations and a discussion on Reva’s thesis on Toilet Architecture which was pretty interesting. We also spent a bit of time thinking about our next move. Coming back from Easter Island was a complete anti climax. We’ve been looking forward to that trip forever and to suddenly be the other side of it left us a little bit uninterested in having to experience anything else for a while. So we’ve been taking it pretty handy enjoying our own space for a while. We did go and visit another Neruda house, La Chascona – which means "wild haired woman" - his Santiago residence. Same story designed over 30 years rather haphazardly but very beautifully. It’s probably our favourite Neruda house even if the views are a little less impressive. We learned also that he was beginning an impressive fourth! free form design project when he died. We also learned he had a completely unexpected affair with the niece of his third wife sometime in his late 60s. Poets is crazy men.

One of the bars at La Chascona

Good luck to Jesper who enters his monkery this week. He has climbed the highest mountains and he has run through the fields, so hopefully the monkery has a lost and found department. Keep us posted on how you’re getting on Jesper (or do these guys even believe in the Internet?) and the best of luck again. And a massive thanks to Marco van Basten for sorting us out with Electric Picnic tickets. That was one of the best surprises we’ve gotten in a long time and having seen the lineup we can’t fricken wait. Thanks to all for the kind and complimentary words of encouragement aswell. You know who you are. It means a lot when you’re over the hills and far away to know that there’s someone somewhere missing you as much as you’re missing them.

We're off to San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile tonight. Its very close to the Atacama desert and we'll have an opportunity to explore the much talked about Altiplano aswell. After that, who knows? The slow train to Uyuni in Bolivia is one option I'm looking forward to but I wont be holding my breath based on my disappointment on hearing that the Tren de los Nubes (Train to the Clouds) is offline for a while. Anyways, chao chao for now.