The End of an era

It was with much sadness yet excitement that we left mainland South America for the last part of our epic journey. Our final stop on the way to our new adventure in Australia would be to a place so few people ever get to see - Easter Island.

Normally a trip to Easter Island is off many travellers radar because it's to hard, far, difficult and expensive to get to. After a fair amount of research, it turned out that the cost of stopping off in Easter Island for a few days on the way back to Melbourne was almost the same price as if we were going to fly directly to Melbourne from Santiago. Bonus for the Vargos !!

When we stepped off the plane in Hanga Roa (pop a tiny 4,000odd), once again without any form of booking we were lucky enough to get straight into our first choice - Chez Oscar Hostel. It was recommended to us by a few people we'd met on the Navimag ferry ride and the tip proved a good one as Oscar was ridiculously helpul and each morning he got us going with a delicious and healthy breakfast.

We only had 3 and a half days, so we hit the exploration track pretty quickly. For those of you who don't know, Easter Island (or "Rapa Nui"), is one of the world's most isolated inhabited islands. It is 3,600 km west of continental Chile. and is famous for its Maoi, or stone carved statues. There are many hundreds´s of these dotted around the island, measuring up to 10m and weighing approx 75 tonnes, all of which were amazingly relocated around the island from the single centrally located quarry. The period when the statues were produced remains disputed, but estimate range from 400 AD to 1500–1700 AD.



The first day we spent a good 4 hour return trip, climbing up Easter Island’s most spectacular volcano - Rano Kau, where Orongo (a major archaeological site), sits on the crater’s rim. From the top we had spectacular views into the crater and the beautiful lagoon within it. To the other side we had vast views down the shear 250-meter cliffs out to sea. We stayed for yet another magical sunset before making the mad dash home along a small forrest path in the fading light.

Day 2 we decided to hire a car and try to complete a full circle of the island as this was the only way we were assured of seeing all the major sites. The Island is not that big, but we quickly discovered that the sites are so impressive that we would end up spending a good couple of hours at each. At each of the sites, the Moai were spectacular. Lyds and I drove in the opposite direction to the traditional touristy bus route, so at almost all of the sites we were rewarded with vast fields of just us, the Moai, the sun and a gentle sea breeze.

As you look up at the erected Moai you really do just stare in wonder at how the heck a civilisation half a millenium ago could build these on one side of the island and drag them all the way to their resting places. There are of course a number of theory's about how they did it, but there is still to this day no definitive proof as to how it was done. Trees are sparse on modern Easter Island, rarely forming small groves. It is believed that the island once had a forest of palms, and it is generally thought that native Easter Islanders deforested the island in the process of erecting their statues.



One of the more impressive sites on the island was actually the quarry inside the extinct volcano Rano Raraku. Almost all (95%) moais were carved out of the distinctive, compressed, easily worked volcanic ash at the site. An interesting fact is that only a quarter of the statues constructed (or in process) were ever installed. Nearly half still remain in the quarry at Rano Raraku with the rest scattered elsewhere on the island, probably on their way to final locations. It is theorised that due to an internal civil war on the island, the building of statues was suddenly abandoned.

After a long day, we went back to the most impressive site - Ahu Tongariki, with 15 statues at night. It was a full moon and I was able to take some fantastic photos that you can see below in the slideshow.

Our last couple of days saw us explore the Island further with a long relaxing 4 hour horseride and a couple of dives. The visibility at Easter Island under water was close to as good as we've ever had from our 30 dives on this trip. No sharks this time though!! One of the best parts of the dive was seeing a sunken Moai statue. It wasn't exactly authentic (one of the dive companies put it there 5 years ago). but it was still pretty cool to dive around.



Overall we feel very fortunate to have been able to visit such a unique and memorable place.

Here are some pics from from Easter Island...


As always, click here if you can´t see the album Easter Island