Isle de Pascua

Garry and I are back in Santiago this evening after an inspiring two and a half days on Easter Island (known to the Chileans as Isle de Pascua). The weather was warm and sunny much of the time making our daily excursions all the more enjoyable. I'll post more details shortly, but here are a couple of photos from our time on the island. Tomorrow morning we fly north to Calama to join a four-day tour of the Atacama Desert.

UPDATE
I've now expanded this post to include more about our time on Easter Island. Scroll down and enjoy!

Where do I begin?  Our unexpected stranding in Antarctica threw a spanner in the works for the next leg of our Chilean tour. We'd originally booked three nights in Santiago, followed by three nights on Easter Island. As I've shared in earlier posts, I managed to salvage our itinerary by rescheduling flights to Easter Island two days later than planned.  I was also able to rebook the same hotel on the island. 

This only left us out of pocket for the hotel room. However, shortly after returning to Sydney, the UK travel agent who’d processed our room booking made contact. She’d heard we never checked in. I duly shared our stranding and rebooking experience. To my surprise, the agent contacted the hotel and secured a refund for our duplicate booking.

How remarkable is that?  We’d arrived on Easter Island believing we'd blown our money on a series of "no-shows". In the end, the entire sector was rescheduled at no additional cost. Although, despite the eleventh-hour reprieve, we came perilously close to losing it all a second time. 

Our rescheduled flight to Easter Island departed early morning. Hence, we sensibly booked ourselves into the Airport Holiday Inn directly opposite the airport terminal. However, after an exhausting day flying from the South Shetland Islands and onwards to Santiago, I forgot to set my alarm. We woke the following morning 40 minutes before our flight closed. 

A quick flurry of activity saw us present ourselves at the Lan Chile counter with minutes to spare. The check-in hall was all but empty with barely a person in sight. The staff behind the desk looked at us long and hard, examined our tickets, and then huddled among themselves before eventually checking us in.

Our first afternoon on Easter Island was spent exploring the township of Ranga Hoa. This is the only permanently inhabited settlement on Rapa Nui (the islander's native name for Easter Island). We walked as far as a small cove that provides the island's only sheltered port. It was here we caught a glimpse of our first moai statue, Ahu Hotake, standing guard over the harbour's entrance.

The following morning we spent a half day touring sights along the island’s southern coast. This included the Orongo ceremonial village and Ahu Vinapu. Surprisingly, neither is renowned for the presence of moai, the island's famous carved stone heads. Like most visitors, we were intrigued that Rapa Nui, despite its compact size and remote location, is home to more than one awe-inspiring ancestral culture.

Orongo sits on the southernmost cliff tops of Easter Island overlooking the flooded volcanic crater of Rano Kau. Here, in the 18th and 19th Century, the island's unique birdman culture flourished. Youths would compete in a ritual each spring to secure the season's first Sooty Tern egg. These birds nest annually on a small pinnacle of rock several hundred metres offshore.

Securing the egg required scrambling down a near-vertical cliff, swimming through heavy ocean swells and finally returning to the top of the cliff. Whoever returned first with their egg intact was crowned ceremonial chief for another year. 

The night before the big event, these young men spent the night resting in a series of low-profile stone huts built along the cliff top. In reality, these huts are little more than open-faced rock shelters with compressed mud floor and an internal ceiling no higher than a dog kennel. Our guide let us crawl in and carefully explore one preserved hut’s cramped confines. 

A most remarkable view lies just beyond the stone huts. In one direction the ground slopes towards spectacular sea cliffs. In the opposite direction, the broad volcanic rim of Rano Kau towers over a permanent crater lake. The crater is almost two kilometres wide and unlike much of the island, it's a green oasis of plant life. I've visited this location on two separate occasions. However, I still marvel at the weed-covered waters sitting on the crater floor more than a hundred metres below.

The next stop on our tour was Ahu Vinapu. This extraordinary stone platform sits on a slope beyond the eastern threshold of the airport runway. The craftsmanship displayed in the assembly of its stonework is unique on the island. The precision and style is almost identical to that seen in the likes of Cusco more than 3000km to the east. Researchers are divided as to whether this platform is proof that the islanders were influenced by Incan culture.

Our next stop was Ahu Akahanga. This is one of the island's largest unrestored ceremonial platforms. The platform is 18 meters in length and once supported a total of 13 moai that varied between five and seven metres in size.  All these statues have long since been toppled.  

However, in most destroyed platforms, the statues lie face down with their iconic features hidden from view. The opposite is true at Ahu Akahanga. Its moai were knocked down lying both face-up and face-down. It's awe-inspiring to see these stone giants in such a vulnerable position when once they stood proudly on their pedestal.

Our final stop of the day was Ana Kai Tangata, the island's popular coastal cave. The cave itself is made of volcanic rock that's been slowly eroded by the sea. It is 10 meters high, 5 meters wide, and 15 meters deep. The ceiling of the cave is domed and has excellent acoustic properties. However, its most impressive attraction is a series of cave paintings. These mainly depict the sooty tern, the seabirds once revered by the island's birdman culture. 

Follow this link for more about our tour of Easter Island including a visit to the island's iconic locations, Rano Raraku, and Ahu Tongariki.