To board the plane to Easter Island — and by the way, there was only one plane a day operated by one airline — I had to fill out a form on the internet. I tried in vain to do so the evening before my departure when the system wouldn’t let me. Dragging my case to the airport the following morning without the completed form had me drag it back to the hotel where the system, then working, allowed a woman at reception to help me complete the form. Why the system worked in the morning and hadn’t the night before is one question. Why a form was necessary at all is another.
Easter Island is a long way from mainland Chile, or from any other mainland, or any other island, for that matter. Its inhabitants must be some of the most remotely situated on earth, and, for that reason among others it is phenomenal. It has one town named Hanga Roa,
one church (Catholic), one filling station, one television channel, and although surrounded by the sea,
only one beach. Nearly all the island’s necessities, including its food other than fish, are imported.
Easter Island is not a resort, and for me, the question of why go there had only one answer: to see the Moai, the dozens of large, uniquely stylized figures sculpted centuries earlier by the Polynesian tribes who settled the island.
Nearly all the Moai are located and protected within a national park that covers most of the island.
The island’s name was bestowed by Dutch Admiral Jacob Roggeveen who landed on Easter Sunday, 1722. To its Polynesian descendants, its name is Rapa Nui.
On Sunday, April 7th, my plane landed at Hanga Roa’s small airport where I simply walked across the tarmac to the terminal. Walking out, I spotted a woman holding a sign with my name.
The shuttle service dropped me at the gate of the Boutique Hotel La Perousse where I was met immediately by a woman named Paula and taken to my room in a building fifty meters away. She left me with a map of Hanga Roa and a few bits of information.
I had a view of the ocean and a small ceiling fan. The room had no AC.
I went for a walk on a part of the town’s main street that wasn’t impressive. It being Sunday, not much was open. A couple of eating places didn’t look inviting. The surroundings looked run down. Back on the shore road leading to the hotel, I ordered a meal on a restaurant’s terrace that wasn’t tasty. The beer I drank was the best. I undressed and read in bed for awhile but fell asleep early. It had been a long day.
The following morning, I walked across to what I took to be the hotel’s entrance, though it had no registration counter as such. Breakfast, on the open terrace, was a buffet supplemented by two fried eggs and a pot of weak tea. Paula, who was a lovely woman, served me, making sure I had all I wanted to eat. After breakfast, at my request, she hooked me up with an English-speaking guide for the next day. His name would be Simon.
I sat on the terrace for a while, reading a book, written in French and English, by two local women about the history and meaning of the island.
One of the authors was buried in the garden of the complex where I was staying. Apparently, it was traditional for people to be buried in their family gardens. I felt I was well enough informed to take in much of what I would see on my tour.
I walked back to main street to a tourist office where I paid $80 for a ticket to enter the island’s national park the next day.
Back in my room, I napped a bit and didn’t go out again until evening when I went to a Polynesian restaurant for a pisco sour that was too sweet. Telling the waitress that I wasn’t very hungry, she recommended the Polynesian ceviche, a mix of raw fish, onion, and bits of avocado. There were a few tasteless sweet potatoes on the plate and some white rice. I sat for a long time after eating, observing the diners around me. There was a strange family group that included an old man and a woman wearing a wide-brim hat who dominated the conversation loudly, speaking a mix of Spanish and French. She seemed to belabor the waitress about something. A man, wife and two children completed the party. The boy and girl spent the entire time drawing and working on paper with pens or pencils, oblivious to what was being said by the adults. They were an odd, demanding group that the waitress had to deal with.
I walked back along the road to my gate in pitch-black darkness. There were no streetlights, and I wished that I had thought to bring my phone. When I entered the stone path that led to my room, I wished for a light even more because I couldn’t see anything. I moved very cautiously until I found my door. Once inside, I found a switch for an outdoor light. If I had noticed it before I left, I could have turned it on. There’s always a lot to learn and relearn.
April 9. It was a fine day for my private tour. Simon was a man born and bred on the island and totally in his element. We spent several hours together driving around in his Mitsubishi pickup. Because he knew and was known by so many islanders he needed to exchange greetings everywhere we went.
I asked Simon how cars and trucks got to Rapa Nui. With no deep-water port, cargo ships anchor out in a bay while flat bottomed, low-draft boats shuttle vehicles and supplies from ship to shore.
Driving through the island’s national park, I admired its unblemished natural beauty, free of residential and commercial development.
It seemed we were never far from the deep blue sea whose contrast with the white breaking surf was stunning.
The Moai are striking figures; some are very large and weigh many tons. They were carved from a hillside of volcanic rock hundreds of years ago by the Polynesian tribes who settled the island. The Moai represented the tribes’ ancestral kings and chiefs whose power was believed to exist immortally to aid and protect the living.
Different theories account for how they were moved from the quarry where they were carved and placed on the platforms and pedestals where they stand today. I learned that once, during war between the two tribes that dominated the island, the Moai had been toppled and some even broken. Although they were reassembled with the use of concrete, evidence of that repair is hardly visible.
Carved with stone tools according to a traditional model, the Moai all look similar. Below their large heads with prominent ears, nose, and eye sockets, their bodies extend to a point below the stomach. Their arms point straight down at their sides. Some seem to have fingers pressing their stomachs.
Some heads are featured with top knots in a different color of stone. When I asked Simon their purpose, he said they simply represented hair.
Simon took me to two places where multiple Moai stood side by side. The first, called Ahu Nauhau, contained eight Moai on a two-layered stone platform. I was disappointed because the light was behind them, and I could barely make out their features. Simon talked a lot, using indigenous names that mostly just confused me. In addition, Simon’s English was grammatically such that following him required strong concentration.
Ahu Tongariki was the second spot featuring a side-by-side array of Moai, and this time what I saw delighted me. The fifteen well-lit Moai ranged from the tallest and biggest on the right to smaller ones on the left. In front of them was a large plain that had once contained a village.
The indigenous people seemed to have slept in groups in long houses in the shape of inverted boats, that is with the peak of the house resembling a boat’s keel. Toward the end of our tour, Simon took me to where the elements of an indigenous village, including a long house, had been recreated. The structure of the house was made of bent wooden branches whose ends are fitted into holes in a stone base. The main branches were crossed by smaller ones and held together with thin ropes made from a plant called mahute.
The village also included a structure whose sides and top were constructed of volcanic stones. The only opening at ground level was tiny, only big enough for a chicken. Simon called it a hen house, and said it was for keeping poultry safe from predators.
Other structures, so-called greenhouses, consisted of stone walls enclosing small plots of land planted with edibles. One had mahute, another taro plants.
I saw vestiges of the ancient volcanos that had formed Rapa Nui.
At one place, where the lava had formed wide smooth surfaces, I saw ancient petroglyphs. One of a fish and another of a boat were very clear.
At one point in the tour, Simon led me to a beach of fine, white coral sand. Its bay was called Hanga Rau Ote Ariki meaning Bay of Kings where the first Polynesian settlers had landed. On that beach, the island’s only, I saw a few sun bathers and swimmers.
The last spot on the tour was to Rano Raraku, the quarry where the Moai were carved. In my youth, a quarry was a large, deep pit from which valued material had been excavated. The ones I remember were abandoned and half filled with water. This quarry was different. The Moai’s appearances were roughly carved in a volcanic hillside before their bodies were freed from the surrounding rock. They were moved downhill and bound with ropes to be moved further. It seems that their final detailed carving was done once they were in place.
The hillside leading up to the quarry had several Moai, some free standing and almost complete while others only partially finished. At some point, not clear to me, they were abandoned and not reclaimed.
Viewing the different monuments involved a lot of walking. The hike to and from the quarry alone took more than an hour. I was tired, hot and sweaty by the time Simon dropped me off at the hotel after 3 o’clock. I showered, napped, and went to an oriental fusion restaurant where I ordered four gyoza that came in a bowl. I thought the waiter understood that I wanted a teriyaki dish to follow and was dismayed after waiting a long while to see that he hadn’t comprehended. Too often, I had experienced this in the countries I passed through.
April 10. I finished reading Zane Gray’s The Riders of the Purple Sage this morning. I was surprised how abruptly the novel ended. I doubt I will ever read any more by this author, but I was glad to have read this one.
When I asked Paula where to get my laundry done, she suggested that her help do it for the price of $20. I agreed, happy to have that task off my mind.
I went for a long walk, exploring parts of the town I hadn’t even known existed. At a dive shop that offered snorkel opportunities, I made a reservation to snorkel in the morning.
I spent a quiet afternoon in my room. About 5 o’clock I walked down the road to a restaurant named La Teverne du Pecheur. I had looked at its menu earlier and it thought it might be good. From a table on an upper level, I had a good view of the large athletic field catty corner across the street. I watched a group of young children being led in calisthenics. Another group of older boys that were probably a soccer team coached by an adult were doing wind sprints to get them into better shape.
I wanted to get back to my room before it became too dark, and when I arrived at my door, I realized that I had locked myself out. This was a problem because due to the kind of hotel it was, there was no one around to let me in. I didn’t have Paula’s number and didn’t know how to contact her. I went into the restaurant next door to where we ate breakfast and somehow persuaded someone to reach her by phone. I waited a long time for Paula to come, as I sat and cursed my fate and the kind of hotel that had no receptionist on duty. Finally, Paula arrived, and we walked to my room. It was a bad ending to a so-so day.
April 11. If last evening had not been bad enough, this morning’s email from Kay brought worse news. It seems someone had used my credit card to buy a Facebook ad. There were a couple of small fraudulent charges on my card, and the card had been blocked. I was on the phone several times with Kay and the Visa fraud section at UBS. I explained that I was in the middle of the Pacific on an island and needed my card to continue traveling. No dice. After what seemed a long time, I was able to use the local ATM for a single withdrawal while on the phone with a person in the fraud department. I took out the maximum, about $200. With that and $800 in U.S. currency that I carried for emergencies, I was able to satisfy my hotel and tour bill. I had some Chilean pesos to eat with that day and use for any incidentals. Kay had paid for the Holiday Inn at Santiago Airport and found a hotel for me in Buenos Aires where a new Visa card would be sent to me in three or four days. It was a bad thing to have happened.
As I licked my wounds and thought about the turn of events, I realized how much I’ve depended on Kay for help during this trip. Were it not for her at this juncture, I was not sure how I could have managed. I love her and owe her a lot.
Friday, April 12. At breakfast, Paula told me that I would be picked up at noon and taken to the airport. I thought it strange to be picked up so early for a 4:30 flight, but I got myself ready. Standing outside just before noon with my belongings, the cleaning woman told me that the pickup time had changed to 2 o’clock.
I was happy to be leaving Easter Island and the town of Hanga Roa, a small town with small-town attitudes. The locals tolerate us because we bring them business, yet they probably resent us for invading their island. Nearly everyone here lives off tourism in some form or other.
At the airport, I had to open my suitcase and show that I was not carrying fruit and vegetables from Easter Island to the mainland. My flight was not full, and in my middle row I had no one sitting next to me. There was plenty of leg room, too. I spent much of the four-and-a-half hours reading my next novel.