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Easter Island Day Two
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This is our second day with Pedro on Easter Island. They were a little better organized and we started on time. Rob and Daryl actually got on the first tender, so had to sit in the bus and read until the rest of the group arrived. Our first stop of the day was the red rock quarry where they Puka'o were carved. They were smaller, made of a more porous stone and easier to transport, but it is still amazing that a group of Rapa Nui moved these huge stones all over the island and then got the Puka'o up onto the Moai heads. Our second stop was a large plataforma with a number of Moai. In general the Moai back the ocean and face the lands of the people, but these were facing the ocean. They had also been swept off the plataforma and had to be re-situated. Some of them had broken necks and had to be restored with the help of some concrete by archeologists. Behind the plataforma were 2 crematoria for the common people.
We then went to a site near the end of the runway at the airport where there was a plataforma in the Inkan style, with carefully carved stones so closely fitted that you could not slide a piece of paper between them. There is no mortar in any of these structures. This Inkan style has raised the idea that the people who inhabited the islands came not from Polynesia but from South America; however, this theory is not the popular one as too many other factors point to the Polynesian migration. The last part of the tour was to Orongo, a village used only 2 weeks a year for contests among the tribal chiefs to determine the "birdman". This involved swimming out to a small island in the rocky bay and waiting for a certain type of bird to lay giant eggs, then grabbing one and swimming back and climbing the cliff straight up to Orongo. The houses at the village are very finely built with some artwork and very small openings so that the tribal elders would see an attacker's head first as he tried to enter and then could bash it in. Orongo is situated by the second largest of the 3 volcanoes on Easter Island and the only one with a lagoon in the center. Looking down into the crater we could see many different plants. Around the top there were petroglyphs, but many of them are fenced off as they are literally hanging off the edge of the cliffs.
The second day required almost as much walking and climbing as the first and was
difficult for some of the group. Again, no lunch break and the only rest stop
was at Orongo at the end. Pedro offered us two alternatives. He could drop us at
the harbor to take a tender back or in Hanga Roa to shop or eat. We all opted
for the first choice. Our dinner was at Red Ginger, but we were almost too tired
to eat much. Also, we grabbed a bite at the Waves Grill when we got aboard as we
had not eaten all day. That might have had something to do with it.
