Day 6

Day 6

Day five, I mean day six. They're starting to run together. We got to the hotel at around 4 am. We didn't have our luggage yet, so we just fell into bed in our clothes. Some time thereafter, I have no idea how long, there was a knock on the door and our little suitcases which we've been calling our wheelies, were outside the door, so I brought those inside. Not long after that, a rooster started crowing outside our window. The stupid rooster wouldn't let us sleep, so we got up at 7:45 for the excursion that started at 9 am. We bathed and dressed and when I opened the door, our big suitcases were outside so I brought those in. Bear in mind we haven't seen them since Orlando, so we were happy to see all of our stuff.

We were introduced to Edmundo Edwards, our tour guide and eminent archaeologist in the south Pacific. He has lived on Easter Island since the '60's, and knows more interesting stories than just about anyone I've ever met. Having people of this caliber working with the tour really speaks volumes for TCS. Our first stop was Puna Pao, the quarry where the red stone "hats" that a few Moai wear came from. This site has not been excavated extensively because there hasn't been sufficient money.

Edmundo told us he was commissioned to create a hat for a Moai, but he didn't want to destroy the site at Puna Pao, so he chose another spot that hadn't been used by the ancient Easter Islanders to get the material. He said they started cutting one piece of stone, and it broke. So they started cutting a second piece, and it broke. They started a third piece and, you guessed it, it broke. So he was talking to an old man of the island and told him his problem. The old man said, "I guess the old people had it right". Edmundo asked what he meant. He said the name of the hill is "Hill with stone that cracks when you carve it". Edmundo said they blasted away some stone and found some that was suitable to use for the hat. Edmundo tells it much better than I do.

After the quarry, we went to see a lava tube. This is a cave that's made when flowing lava leaves a hollow area. The soil inside is very fertile, so when the ceiling collapses (as it apparently inevitably does), there's a depression that's protected from the wind, is fertile, and usually humid (at least on Easter Island), so it's ideal for growing. It's not a very big area, but in the one we saw, there were several trees growing up out of it.

Edmundo had a funny story about this too. He said a young German man came to Easter Island and saw the lava tube and had an idea to make some money. He dressed up in a loin cloth, and he had quite a few tattoos, and made himself look like a savage or wild man. He also used the rocks in the cave to make a fire pit, and "chicken coop". Then tourists would come to visit him and give him money to take a picture with him. At the end of every day, he'd get on his motorcycle hidden at the other end of the cave and head back to town to his apartment. At the end of the tourist season, he'd go home to Germany and live on his earnings. This continued year after year until he got married, and his wife wouldn't let him do it any more.

After the lava tube, we went back to the hotel to have lunch. Actually, lunch wasn't at our hotel. There are no hotels on Easter Island big enough for all of us, so our hotel was Taha Tai, and lunch was at the Hotel Hanga Roa. The two are close enough that we could easily walk over. I noticed several people sitting around using their laptops, so I asked if they were using the Internet. One responded affirmatively, and said it was working great. This was surprising because we had been told that the best
we could do on Easter Island was dial-up. Lunch was a buffet of a variety of items, and was quite good. There were pork ribs (short ribs, don't think baby backs), and vegetarian lasagna, and sweet potatoes (these are white, not like yams), and other things. After lunch we went out for our afternoon excursion.

This was our first outing where we got to see actual Moai up close. When we were driving to Puna Pao, we went quite close to Ahu Akivi, but we were going to see it tomorrow, so they wouldn't stop there for us. I don't remember the name of this ahu. An ahu is one of the altars where one or more Moai are standing. There were five Moai on this ahu, but none were in very good shape. This ahu is normal in the sense that it is near the shore and the Moai are facing inland, overlooking the village they're protecting. Something I found interesting, and since you're reading this you're stuck with my opinion of what's interesting, was that the ahus and Moai were not intended to be permanent. The Moai are deified ancestor chiefs. But, a chief would only protect down to his great grandchildren. After that, they wouldn't know them, and so they'd no longer protect the village. So they'd have a new Moai carved by the carving guild (seriously), and moved to the ahu. The ahu is made of a veneer or shell of large rocks, and filled with small stones, or pebbles, and dirt. Sometimes in order to install the new Moai, the ahu would have to be rebuilt, especially if the new Moai was significantly bigger than the old one. In some cases, the old Moai would actually become part of the new ahu. Anyway, this site also had a "house", a rock construct with five doors, each of which faced one of the Moai. It didn't look too inviting to me.

Our next stop was a site that overlooks the "Bird Man island". The old Easter Islanders had a competition every year where the strongest man from each tribe would climb down the cliff, swim out to this island a half mile off shore, and get a bird's egg, swim back, climb back up the cliff, and deliver the unbroken egg to the chief. The first one to deliver a whole egg won. This gave the winner and his tribe a lot of power and influence for that year. This was no run around the block. The water is cold. The currents can be quite strong. If you start when the currents are going the wrong way, you can be swept out to sea and never heard from again. The winner also got to name the coming year (the year of Bob, maybe). Part of this site were some acoustic chambers. If you speak while in one of these chambers, you could hear what was being said out on the cliff side of the island. The big thing at the site, though was the crater. This is a volcanic crater, not an impact crater. The bottom is almost covered in pools of water, and the bottom is apparently quite fertile. There are grapes that grow there, among other things. I told one of the tour guides they need to open a winery. Easter Island wine would sell very well, just on novelty. There are some petroglyphs near the rim of the crater, but they're hard to see and almost impossible to capture in a photo (at least for me).

After this, we headed back to the hotel. We all got changed into our Williams family tour tee shirts so we could take a picture before dinner (after dinner, I would probably have stains on it so before was safer). Sam and I took our computers up to the Hanga Roa Hotel bar to use the Internet. He downloaded his school Powerpoint and lab assignments and I read my email and caught up on a little news. Before dinner, we had a brief talk by the tour guides Claudio, Patricia and of course, Edmundo. Then we had a demonstration of Polynesian dancing. Apparently, dancing for the men involves a lot of slapping their chest. All the men had red patches on their chest by the time they were finished where they had been hitting themselves. Dinner was a "traditional Umu meal". It was tuna and sweet potatoes cooked in a fire pit, and some food I guess was not traditional, like chicken and beef. I don't know, maybe the ancient Easter Islanders had cows and chickens.

After supper, Jan and I left early and walked along the coast road to take pictures. Our intended destination was the cemetery. This may sound morbid, but it was very colorful, and full of beautiful flowers. I don't know if it's always like that or if it had to do with the fact that we were there right after all saints day, but it was very pretty. On the way, we passed a man on a horse and thought he was just out for an evening ride. We saw him later herding some of the horses in the area to a grassy area. I guess he owned them. Horse ownership is somehow a status symbol on the island, even though no one does anything with them other than a few that are ridden. Most just seem to roam free and graze. Jan and I got to the cemetery when it was starting to get dark. I didn't think any of the pictures would come out, but a few did. It was getting quite dark by the time we were walking back to the hotel, but we never felt threatened or like we were in danger at any time. After this very long day, our bed felt very very good.