Moai, Moai and more Moai!

We arrive to Santiago, Chile late Tuesday night, and rather then paying for a place to sleep for just a few hours we take a cab directly from the bus terminal to the airport, where we decide we will spend the night. The airport actually has a pretty good set-up for overnighters! It has rows of comfy chairs and a 24 hour Dunkin Donuts! Not bad! So after a night of people watching, and me not sleeping, we head to our gate around 6:00am to check into our flight to La Isla de Pascua, or Easter Island. After being delayed over an hour, the flight is awesome! Great movies, great food, free beer! Rapa Nui, the islands official name to its Native Polynesian inhabitants, is a volcanic island formed by lava from 3 seperate volcanoes, 3,700km east of Chile. This island is a small gem in the middle of nowhere, visited by less than 50, 000 tourists a year, who flock here to see its mysterious Moai (Moe- eye), or giant statues, found scattered throughout the eerie landscape. (Just an FYI, other vocabulary you may come across: Ahu=ceremonial platform, NEVER to be walked on and Pukao=topknot or headpiece, reflecting a type of hairstyle once common in Rapa Nui).


We arrive on the island, and are greeted outside the airport with beautiful flower lays from our hotel. I have never been to Hawaii, but I felt like I was there! The weather is gorgeous and I instantly think I am going to fall in love with this place. Laura and I have been looking forward to this part of our trip for sooooo long, as we knew we would be staying in a nice hotel for 4 nights where we could leave our stuff and feel safe. We arrive to Hotel Gomero in the town of Hanga Roa, and it´s so cute! We have flowers all over our room, a little patio overlooking the pool and the most exciting thing.... hot water, not only in the shower but in the sink! We have not had that yet on our trip! I instantly knew these next few days were going to be awesome!


We take some photos of our place before exploring the island. We check out tour agencies and shops, then walk along the coast, before indulging in tuna/shrimp empanadas, while watching the sunset over the water. Its beautiful! After sunset we head back to our hotel, passing a local soccer match and seeing our first Moai, statue. Great way to end the night!


We wake up to a great breakfast buffet at our hotel! Normally at the hostels we have been staying at we get bread and butter for breakfast, if anything, so to see cereal, yogurt, fruit, bread, ham, cheese and pastries was exciting! So good in fact, that we wrapped some treats up in napkins and took them for later! When traveling for 10 weeks we save money wherever we can, right Laura?? (Sneaking food, toilet paper, soap, whatever we can!)


After breakfast we kill time looking at souvenir shops and visiting icecream shops, before taking an afternoon horseback ride up to Maunga Terevaka, the highest point on the island. We mount the horses at a local family´s ranch and the ride begins. Everything goes well until my horse decides he's hungry. He tries to eat every couple feet, causing me to almost fall off, multiple times. The horses also have issues of wanting to be in front, constantly pushing the other horse out of the way, and that also meant almost knocking off the riders, me and Laura!! I have ridden horses many times and every time I question why I choose to do it! I am not a big fan of horses and always end up with the naughty ones, but for some reason I find myself doing it anyway!


Thankfully after an hour or so we arrive at our first stop, Ahu Akivi, where I get off my horse (yay!) and see our first group of Moai! They are amazing! They are huge and mysterious! They also happen to be the only 7 Moai statues facing the water. We take a ton of pictures, laugh at the Chinese tourists who annoyingly happen to be in almost every picture we take and then reluctantly get back on the horses. We ride for an hour or so, which seems like forever, trekking through mud, rocky gravel and green pastures. We run into wild horses, bulls, and cows before reaching Terevaka! The view of the island below is amazing but its so windy it's hard to even stand still to get a good photo. We attempt a few, then back on the horses we go to head down.


Again my horse gets hungry and cranky! He is fighting with me, pulling the opposite direction of where I tell him to go and eventually runs off the road. My guide had to chase after us, grab the rein and drag us for the next half hour or so. I was so pissed at my horse and the situation. It was raining, I was cold, it was muddy and we had now been on these horses for almost 5 hours, which was about 4 1/2 hours too long! We finally arrive back to the ranch, say thanks to the family and head back home. We have plans to go to the small movie theater on the island to watch a film entitled Rapa Nui, but find out they are having problems with the projector and can't show it that night. Bummer, but oh well, I ended up buying the movie later on so I can watch it when I get home to MN! Tomorrow we're renting 4-wheelers and are super excited!


Friday July 23rd, we wake up and go rent our 4-wheeler! The whole island of Rapa Nui is only 15.3 miles long and 7.6 miles wide, making it easy to cover a lot of its ground if renting some sort of transportation (except for the northern coast, which is only accessible by foot or horseback, which I definitely did not want to do again)! We originally were going to rent a SUV for the day, as it was cheap and driving on the island seemed safe, but instead we saw the 4-wheel option and decided that sounded much more adventurous! This was probably one of the best decisions we made! The 4-wheeler was so fun! We had it for 24 hours and could go wherever we wanted, what freedom?!! So we hopped on the 4-wheeler, grabbed our map and headed out of town. We were now on the search for Moai! Most people take guided tours of the island, as many of the Moai are in hard to find and hard to access places, however we decided to do things a little more independently by buying a guide book and renting the 4-wheeler. This way we still got information on every site, but could go at our own pace. It literally was like a scavenger hunt for Moai!! We would look at our map, check the location of the next Moai in line, and set out searching for it/them. Once arriving we would pull out our guide book and read about the site. The best part of it was that most of the day we were the only 2 people insight. Every once in awhile we would come across other tourists, more so at the beach spots, but for the most part, nobody was around except me, Laura and the Moai. There was something about it that was a little eerie, but also amazing! We did run into a couple local Rapa Nui guys along the way, who are beautiful I must add, and they invited us to hang out and have lunch in their village but we told them we were in a hurry, as we had a lot to see, but we could meet up with them later in town. They made a joke about how getting to know the people of Rapa Nui is much more important than finding every Moai the island had to offer. They had a valid point but we were still determined to find them all! Some of our stops throughout the day included:

Anakena beach- beautiful beach with the lone Moai of Ahu Ature Huki and Ahu nau nau, consisting of 7 moai with coral eyes
Ahu Tongariki- one of the most famous and mesmerizing sites, consisting of 15 moai, the largest ahu ever built
Ana Kakenga- area filled with caves and many knocked down Moai


After a couple more hours of Moai searching we realize it was getting late and we needed to rush home to get ready for our show we had booked for the night. Rapa Nui has its own style of dancing, similar to the Hauka in New Zealand and we were told it was something we had to experience while there! After asking around we decide on the Te Ra'ai show, which includes a typical dinner, as well as a dance performance and lessons. We rush home on the 4-wheeler, shower and get ready for the night!


We arrived at Te Ra'ai and were immediately greeted by handsome Rapa Nui men in costume. They gave us a cocktail and pulled us into the side room, where they painted our faces with traditional Rapa Nui designs. We then were sent up on stage with everyone else to start our dance lessons! It was so fun! (And quite comical, especially watching some of the old men)! We were told to remember these moves as some of us would be called up later to show them off. I had my fingers crossed that it was not me! After the dance lesson is was time for dinner, in which we were called outside to observe. Our dinner was prepared in a traditional underground oven or special kind of firepit. It was literally a hole in the ground, filled with fire-heated stones and layers of food, each covered by a layer of banana leaves, and then all covered with dirt and surrounded by a rock wall. The oven consisted of 2 layers of food, chicken and fish first, and then sweet potatoes and carrots. After watching the food preparation ceremony outside we headed back in, to indulge in our feast! Everything about the meal was delicious, especially the dessert, which was my favorite banana breadcake, served with a traditional Rapa Nui cocktail and wine!


After dinner it was showtime! It was super entertaining! The dancers were so intense! I could tell they really enjoyed what they doing. Each dance had a story behind it, and different attire. Sometimes Laura and I could not help but laugh, or stare, as some of the mens costumes were nothing more that a triangle cut out of animal skin covering their ´you know what!´ The show lasted about an hour, then it was time for the dancers to bring people up on stage, the part I was dreading. Of course, who do you think was one of the first people called up? Me! I was super embarrassed at first, but as other people were brought up, I loved it! It helped that my guy was super good looking! We danced for awhile, then they ended with a finale and photo session. We took pictures with some of the dancers, before heading back to Hotel Gomero. What a great Easter Island experience?! We got home home a lot later than expected and had origianlly planned to go out to the bars/clubs, but we wanted to wake up early and make it one of the Moai sites by sunrise, so we went to sleep.


Saturday June 24th was our last full day on the island. We started our day by getting up early in order to make it to Ahu Tongariki by sunrise! Although we had already seen this site yesterday, we were told it was breathtaking at sunrise so we wanted to see it again. Still having our 4 wheeler, we set out in the pitch dark with only our headlights to guide us. We got extremely lost, which seems hard to do on such a small island, but we did! We finally got back on the right road, after stopping at the police station to ask for directions, and with no other vehicles in sight we drive as fast as we can, as we can already see the sun beginning to come up! We approached Ahu Tongariki, about halfway through sunrise, which actually provided some of the prettiest colors. We ate a snack in the grassy field infront of the Moai while taking pictures and being amazed with the colors in the sky. After sunrise we jumped back on the 4-wheeler and headed to the volcano of Rano Raraku. This is considered the ´nursery´ of the Moai. We actually snuck in here, as it was not open yet but the gate was ajar! This place was like no other place on the island. There were Moai all over the place, some laying, some standing and some looking as if they were about to tip over. One of the largest Moai ever carved, a whopping 21 meters tall, is found here! This area is also home to a large crater, which was a pain to hike up to but worth it. The view was great! By the time we were done seeing everything the site had to offer, it was unfortuantely open to the public, which meant they did make us pay on our way out. They didn´t question why we entered the site without permission, they just asked for money. It was now after 10 and our 4-wheeler was suppose to be returned by 10:30 so again we hopped on it and rushed to get back to Hanga Roa! Again, we somehow got lost, making us realize we were already going to be late bringing the 4-wheeler back so we might as well try to rush back to the hotel first, in time to get breakfast, which ended soon as well. We made it just in time for breakfast, but did end up paying a fine for returning the 4-wheeler late. Oh well. It was sad giving it back, as it had been such a quick way to get from place to place.


There was still one big site we had not seen on the island and this was the ceremonial sight of Orongo. We began hiking there in the afternoon, not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. This was no stroll in the park. It was intense hiking for a couple hours! At one point we were walking in grass up to our shoulders! After that it was a marked path but still extremely steep! When we made it to the top we were so relieved! We approached the Ranu Kao, lake-filled crater, which was beautiful and then walked down to the ceremonial village. Orongo was filled with small, cave like houses that actually used to be lived in, petroglyphs, which are carvings of typical Rapa Nui designs in the rocks and cliffs and it provided views of the 2 smaller islands near Easter Island,that are too small for anyone to actually live on. We spent a little time here and then literally began running back down the mountain, which was alot easier than the climb up, in order to make it to one more site, this time intended to make it there by sunset. We ran down the mountain and hopped in the first cab we saw. Our cab rushed us to Ahu Tahai, Ahu Akapu and Ahu Ko Te Riku, as we told him we wanted to be there by sunset. Again we were rushed, story of our lives!! There were other tourists already camped out, with their cameras, ready to witness the beauty! Laura and I ate our picnic dinner we had brought, while enjoying the moment! After the sun was set we walked back home in the dark and went to sleep one last night at Hotel Gomero. Tomorrow morning we sadly need to leave the island and head back to Santiago, which also means heading back to the world of backpacking, moving from place to place, sleeping in dormrooms, not having hot water, getting served only bread for breakfast, always keeping one eye on our belongings.... It is sad to leave the little island, where the boys show up at the clubs on horseback and locals already recognize us and know our names on the streets! I LOVE EASTER ISLAND!