The boys had a week and a half off from school for Fall Break, so we decided to use the extended break for a 9 day trip to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. Rapa Nui is famous for the large, mysterious statues littered across the island. It's a place Drew and I have always been curious about, so we decided to check it out. It is similar to Hawaii in how far away it is from the coast. It was a 5.5 hour plane ride to get there. It is now also, unbeknownst to me prior to this adventure, a territory of Chile, and you can only get there by flying from Santiago. So lucky for us, we got to pay non-international prices for our plane tickets. When you look at Rapa Nui on google maps, it looks like it is literally in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.
When you zoom in a bit more, you see that Rapa Nui is sorta close-ish to other South Pacific islands. The closest land is Pitcairn Island, which is still 1,289 miles away. Technically, it is in the farthest corner of the Polynesian triangle, with New Zealand and Hawaii anchoring the other vertices. That resonates with me, because Rapa Nui seemed to me to be the birth child of Hawaii and New Zealand. It had the tropicalness of Hawaii, but still had lots of open pastures and the wild, raw beauty of New Zealand. Rapa Nui is believed to be one of the last places on Earth to be inhabited by humans (except Antartica, of course). That alone made me want to visit it. Scientists debate when it was first inhabited, with the date ranging from 300 -1200 CE. It's believed voyagers from the Marquesas Islands were the ones who settled Rapa Nui, which is 2,275 miles away. Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) sailing vessels can sail about 60 nautical miles in 24 hours given a moderate breeze. Needless to say, it would have taken those voyagers 38 days of sailing non-stop to reach Rapa Nui. That doesn't take into account bad weather, breaks, getting "lost," (which is a lark seeing as the voyagers didn't know where they were sailing to); it is amazing they made it at all!! That is some human stubbornness and determination right there. It also seemed like one of those places that makes sense to visit only if you're in this part of the world, so off we went.
Most of the moai (statues) are located within the Rapa Nui National Park which you need to buy a 10-day pass in order to enter. Since we had our temporary residencies, we were able to get a local pass which was much cheaper. It is required that you visit the sites with a Rapa Nui guide. This is required for a couple reasons. One, they want to ensure the sites are respected and that there is no defacing or destruction to the moai. Second, it creates well paying jobs for the Rapa Nui people. If you are an indigenous Rapa Nui, you can be a guide automatically. If you aren't, you can take a certification course to learn all about the history and become a guide. We had booked a 2-day tour with the husband of our Airbnb host who was 100% Rapa Nui. Luckily the wife came along to translate, because, while the husband was speaking Spanish, it was very garbled and hard to understand.
The first day of the tour, we visited Ahu a Kivi, which has 7 moai on an ahu (stone platform). Moai, in general, are thought to be the faces of deified ancestors of the Rapa Nui. These 7 moai are different than most because they face out to the ocean, while all of the other moai face inland, protecting their people. This brings up an interesting point in historical restoration. Sometime between 1722 and 1850, all of the moai had fallen down or been toppled over. We know they were still standing in 1722, because the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen visited the island for a week, arriving on Easter Day (hence the name Easter Island), and his journals indicate the moai were standing then. He also says there were 2,000-3,000 people on the island at that time and that "all the country was under cultivation." This was the first known interaction between the Rapa Nui and Europeans, and, as you might guess, things did not go well after that for the Rapa Nui. During that specific interaction, "when the Dutch got to shore, the islanders pressed around them, tried to touch the Dutch, their clothes, and even their guns. During this, a shot rang out from an unknown person, leading to a firefight that killed ten or twelve islanders." How could it be a firefight when only one side had guns? Sounds more like a firing squad. Additional interactions with Europeans led to disease, slave raids by Peruvians, all kinds of problems that contributed to "societal collapse." By 1892, there were only 101 Rapa Nui alive on the island. Read the wiki page for the entire history, it's shocking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Easter_Island
So, how and and why the moai were toppled is a large question. Some believe different Rapa Nui tribes toppled other tribes' moai in anger and violence after the Dutch arrived. But there are not forts or strongholds on the island that suggest the Rapa Nui were at war with each other. Others believe the Rapa Nui toppled the moai because "the island's ecosystem was severely impacted by deforestation, leading to resource scarcity and conflict among the Rapa Nui people. This environmental crisis likely contributed to a loss of faith in the effectiveness of the moai and their ability to protect the islanders." As will be a common theme on this trip, we left with more questions than answers. You can see the restoration efforts on the moai. For example, in the picture below, they reattached the head of the moai to the body with cement. But arguably these moai originally faced inwards to the island center just like the rest of the others did. But whoever restored these moai chose to face them towards the sea to better illustrate the story of the original voyagers who discovered the island: 2 navigators and 5 men sent by the king Hotu Matu'a from the island of Hiva in the the Marquesas Islands. Was the restoration team wrong to alter the position of moai for storytelling purposes? Debatable. Are the moai still impressive? Very.
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