INTRODUCTION
Why title a journal about Easter Island with those particular adjectives? Does it mean we didn't enjoy our visit there or that it was too difficult to get there? No indeed! Here's why those words are apropos. 1) The island's history is so tragic and melancholy that it pervades every step taken during a visit. 2) The island is so very far from anywhere else in the world that it spars with Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic for the dubious honor of being the most isolated inhabited place on the globe.
If these adjectives are true, why do increasing numbers of tourists want to see Easter Island for themselves? Most people already know the answer to that question: because of those huge and mysterious statues that line the coasts! Like the pyramids of Egypt and Teotihuacan, like the temples of Angkor Wat, like the City of Chan Chan, the "moai" draw people because of their mystery. How were they built, how did Stone Age people carve those enormous statues and then move them miles away from the quarries?
When we read a brochure from our favorite travel company (Zegrahm) about a trip along the West Coast of South America, we were intrigued but somewhat dubious until we understood that it would include a side trip to Easter Island. Then we signed up right away. All those pictures of the grave and pensive moai we had ever seen came flooding back into memory. We wanted to probe the mystery of the island for ourselves, just like so many before us. Human beings can be as curious as cats are supposed to be. We all like a mystery, don't we?
THE PHYSICAL ISLAND
Triangular in shape, Easter Island is the progeny of the three volcanoes that formed it as they rose from the sea bottom towards the surface some 750,000 years ago. They are all considered dormant now; the most recent eruption is 100,000 years in the past. The island is 15.3 miles long and 7.6 miles wide and it comprises 63 square miles. There are three freshwater crater lakes but no permanent rivers or streams. The land rises from sea level to 1663 ft. It is 2182 miles away from mainland Chile of which it is a Special Territory.
The island is hilly and largely covered in grasses. There are some small stands of trees but none of them are indigenous to the island. There are desert stretches as well with very sparse vegetation. There are only 6 species of birds native to Easter Island and three rat species are the only native mammals. Today, of course, we see cattle, horses, chickens, some goats and pigs and rats (more about them a little later). There are also migratory seabirds that still frequent the island. But no informed person comes to Easter Island for the bird life or to view indigenous animals. All in all, the island has a certain austere beauty and its many cove-like beaches are lovely, surrounded by low rocky cliffs, white sand shores bathed by aquamarine tinted ocean waves.
THE TOURIST-ORIENTED ISLAND
Hanga Roa is the only town on the island and it contains the historic Catholic Church, the Town Hall, an interesting small museum, many shops and businesses and paved roads. There are Moai near the town at the waterfront and others scattered around the entire island, mostly on the coasts though there are some interior ones.
Housing is ordinary, outfitted with all the modern conveniences including Internet connections, electricity, potable water, propane gas, petroleum products, and the stores are filled with the usual items seen on mainland Chile. There are some souvenir shops catering to the tourists as well. The Chilean enthusiasm for soccer has translated to this Polynesian island as manifested in the civic soccer fields in various parts of the island.
Our home base for the visit was the Explora Lodge which was really quite comfortable and attractive. The cabins were spacious and well-appointed. Our meals were really quite delicious with plenty of choices at all three servings. There was air conditioning throughout the lodge including inside the cabins. The buildings were faced with lava rock and there was some simple but attractive woodwork inside the public areas and the cabins too.
Because Explora Lodge is spread out over a gentle hillside, there were wonderful views from all parts of the property looking down over the fields and out towards the blue Pacific. Naturally, this incline also meant that we had numerous opportunities to exercise our legs: "hill work" to and fro from the parking lot where all our tours began and ended. That helped when we went exploring the island since many of the walks around sites and statues were on hilly ground.
We also had a resident cat to worry over. Outside our cabin the morning, "Bunny" as we called her (after all Easter Island is her home) would meet us on the way to breakfast to request that we return with something for her. Of course, we answered this petition every day.
She liked cheese and eggs and some bacon or ham seemed quite acceptable as well. On our last day of the visit, she failed to show up so we just hoped she had transferred her attentions to another set of cooperative guests who were just arriving rather than leaving.
THE HISTORIC ISLAND
There is much controversy regarding the actual dates and origins of Easter Island's first human inhabitants. First European contact is well-documented in the records of one Captain Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutchman who discovered the island on April 5, 1722 (it was Easter Day thus the island's new name). The inhabitants called their home Rapa Nui then and now.
It is most often postulated that the original colonizers were Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands which are 2646 miles away or Tahiti which is 2646 miles distant. The natives of these islands are known to be excellent navigators and the ability to move between these faraway places using big canoes and star-plotting has been proven in modern times. There are many similarities among the various Polynesian cultures, but geographers and anthropologists believe that the closest "cousins" to the Rapa Nui peoples are the Marqueasans: similar languages are the most compelling of these clues.
Historians generally agree that the first Polynesians to arrive on Easter Island in any numbers did so between 300-400 A.D. There is a tradition that the first king among the colonizers was Hoto Matua. Some scientists conjecture that there is some kind of South Aamerican thread in early Rapa Nui history (before "modern" European contact. This theory is based on the undisputed fact that early Rapa Nui peoples cultivated sweet potatoes. Paleobiologists and others are proven that the sweet potato had its origin in South America. Without that connection between South American Indians and Rapa Nui people, how could the latter have grown sweet potatoes as their major subsistence crop? Further evidence is cited in the similar stonework observed in Peru and on Rapa Nui. Mortarless walls with joints so tightly fitted that a knife blade cannot pass between the two sides are significant observations of both culture's stonework. Last of the mysterious facts rests on DNA evidence taken from the ancient bones of 12 Rapa Nui skeletons which revealed only Polynesian ancestry.
Be all that contradictory evidence as it may, the present composition of the Rapa Nui population is 69% pure Polynesian with the remaining citizens being of Spanish extraction. in 2012, the population was 5800 people. More fascinating than that is the truth that its lowest population counts after the ravages of internecine warfare, the introduced diseases brought by the visiting Europeans, and the decimation caused by the Spanish slave trade in the 1860s, the population once dipped to 111 individuals! This makes the survival of the Rapa Nui culture more miraculous than it appears on surface examination!
The sad history of the Rapa Nui has been discussed in the above chapters, but those horrors are not the only ones visited upon these people. Besides falling victim to fatal (for them) European diseases, enduring a period of ruthless slaving from Peru, and fighting among themselves, their history also includes bouts of famine, natural disasters like tsunamis, soil erosion depleting food production, deforestation, perhaps even cannibalism (though that example has not been universally accepted by scholars, archeologists and historians), and the complete collapses of their two basic spiritual beliefs and systems sequentially. First their reliance on the mana (power) derived from the Moai which were believed to contain the souls of important ancestors who could mediate between the world of the living and the spirits of the dead (who occupied the ocean world) and the ending of the "Birdman" culture which followed that loss.
The Birdman Cult is not completely understood today but apparently it involved competitions between candidates from various factions in the society to determine the man strongest and most capable of providing effective leadership. The competition included swimming in treacherous waters, catching fish, providing food for the people. Perhaps the wings carved, etched and drawn on representations of the competitors suggests some sort of totemism using seabirds as powerful allies or examples in the struggle for survival on the island. At any rate, carvings in rock faces always show the competitors with wings as do the extant cave paintings and would figures. The Birdman Cult was already of fading significance among the peoples when the Catholic missionaries arrived in the early 1800s to begin the conversion of the native peoples. Today Catholicism is the dominant religion on the island.
Another sight which testifies to the loss of faith in the Moai's power is the many Moai which have been toppled from their ahus (platforms). Some of these are believed to have been swept over by the tsunamis which have hit the island in the past. Others appear to have been deliberately pushed off their platforms as if they have been revealed as false gods who have failed the people in their times of trouble. This kind of toppling may have been a transition between the ardent Moai building period and the rise of the "Birdman Cult."
In the eyes of many modern scholars and archeologists, the Rapa Nui were in many cases responsible for their own woes because of their overpopulation beyond the carrying capacity of the small island and because of the deforestation which their avid and obsessive Moai production entailed. These "blamers" state that the trees were cut down to provide transport for the huge statues and that loss allowed the catastrophic soil erosion produced by the constant winds with nothing to anchor the soil.
More recent scholarship has placed the causes square in the jaws of the Polynesian Rat which probably came to the islands with the first human settlers. The rats rapidly reproduced themselves and covered the island. Unfortunately they ate the seeds of the slow-growing palms along with any young shoots that managed to survive the seed stage to the extent that the palm trees were unable reproduce themselves and went extinct. The "blamers" often cite the Rapa Nui as the first examples of irreversible and wanton environmental destruction by human beings. But the picture maybe much more complicated than that simple accusation would suggest.
OUR ISLAND
Though only five of us decided to take the pre-trip Zegrahm offered to those going on the later cruise along the west coast of South America, we were blessed with the best possible guide for our explorations—Alexandra Edwards, the daughter of the foremost archeologist native to Easter Island, Edmundo Edwards. Not only is Alex his daughter, she is now his associate in exploring all aspects of Rapa Nui culture as well as his co-author of their amazing book "When the Universe Was an Island." It was no doubt impossible to find her equal anywhere except perhaps her father now 73 who was off the island in the USA to accept an award for his work on Rapa Nui Island.
Since we were so few and all very interested in everything she would share with us, we had her with us all the time. She was an excellent explicator of the complicated theories about the mysterious island and she was generous in sharing the most recent discoveries she and her father were currently working on some sort of conjectured linkages between Rapa Nui structures and astronomical findings—such as explanations for orientations of houses, caves, placement of Moai and the like. Their hypotheses are still in the investigative stages and not ready for publication yet.
I am sure that our trip with visits to all the important sites on the island was greatly enriched through having Alex as our guide. For instance, she and her father are convinced that the early Rapa Nui moved the huge Moai by "rocking" he smaller ones down the many old gravel roads which are clearly visible around the island. The Rapa Nui did not have the "wheel" so it is likely that some of the larger Moai were rolled along those same roads using palm logs. There are many broken Moai along some of the roads testifying to accidents in transport or weakness in the statues themselves.
Alex knew which fallen Moai was stood back up by Thor Heyerdahl and which ones had been restored by replacing the coral rock irises and the obsidian pupils. She showed us the line of 15 Moai which her father had helped re-stand and restore in the past.
She took us to the quarry on Rano Raraku where we saw so many Moai still at the site but buried up to their necks now in ground covered with grass. She walked us around the other quarry where the red scoria rock was dug for the head-dresses worn by so many of the Moai.
She corrected our misconception that the coastal Moai statues were oriented with their faces towards the sea as though peering out at the wide and empty sea. No, the vast majority of Moai faces are oriented towards the villages and homes of the people because they are seen as the mediators between land and sea, between the living and the spirit world and as protectors for the living. Only a very few Moai are in the interior of the island and even fewer face the land . Further, she showed us remnants of the houses in which early Rapa Nui lived. Their foundations are still visible rocks piled in a boat-shaped patterns. It is believed that palm fronds and trunks were used to cover the dwelling and that they were very low necessitating a crawling entry.
The chiefs of the villages built their homes parallel to the Moai and quite close to the statues to receive the strongest mana from the spirit within. The other people in a village built their houses pointing towards the sea and receding further from the coastline depending on their social ranking. The society was hierarchical in the extreme and leaders had to be members of the recognized royal blood line.
Alex insisted that we attend a local show, called Kari Kari, to observe native entertainments consisting of music and dance. None of us was particularly keen, but she was correct. It was a very dynamic evening and besides some excellent
displays of disciplined athleticism, very toned bodies, energetic dancing and the enthusiasm of the audience, it also demonstrated to us how closely related Polynesian peoples are in terms of their cultures. We had dances from Tahiti, the Marquesas, and even New Zealand. The similarities were undeniable. We all considered ourselves very lucky indeed to be just 5 tourists together and to have had the luck of getting Alex as our Rapa Nui guide and explicator.
AN AMAZING COINCIDENCE
While we were visiting Rano Raraku, we encountered a native gentleman in his early 60s perhaps who seemed to be a self-appointed guide in the area for people who needed one. Of course, we did not need one but he wanted to show us a scrapbook he had with him which included some before and after pictures of excavations in the area as well as some interesting people from the island. One photo he was particularly proud of showed a priest walking down a road with a little boy about 6 holding his hand. He said the little boy was himself and that he had really loved & greatly respected this Catholic priest who had lived on the island for years.
Kay & l looked with only mild interest at the photo when suddenly he looked familiar to us. How could that be; we had never visited Easter Island before. We talked to the man trying to ascertain something about his tenure at the church. Slowly but surely it dawned on us that we had met this priest before and had actually shared a meal with him in our hometown.
How did that happen? Our across the street neighbors were devout Catholics an supporters of missionary work around the world. This priest had visited Jacksonville (probably fundraising in area churches) and he was hosted by our neighbors. The provided him room and board while he was in town. One night they gave a small dinner party for him and asked interested people to join the party. The priest had promised to show slides of scenes around the island. Our neighbors knew that Kay and I were keenly interested in travel and faraway places, so we were included.
The honoree at this dinner was a cherubic looking fellow with a little girth but not enough to make him a Friar Tuck. He clearly loved Easter Island and his parishioners and all the Rapa Nui people really. His pictures were fascinating and now we know that the church he showed was not that much different from how it looks today. Simple but attractive and welcoming.
The native gentleman holding out his scrapbook was clearly "floored" that we had actually met this man and "broken bread" with him. He was so impressed and touched that he asked us if he could have his picture taken with us! As though we were celebrities or something import rather than just every day tourists.
Of course we complied and we heard him showing other people around the small picture on his cellphone, beaming with pride and happiness that he had actually meet two ladies who knew his friend. Wow! You can't make this kind of thing up!
CONCLUSION
It is no longer that difficult to visit Easter Island just long plane rides are required since you can only approach the island from Santiago, Chile, though we saw reports that Peru may soon be permitted to offer flights from Quayaquil to the island. The mysteriousness has not vanished from the island though it has been much studied and its natural beauty is undeniable. Some of the open questions may never be answered, but mysteries continue to be fun and they are an attraction to bring more tourists to the island which is almost totally dependent on tourism for its support.
