Easter Island or Rapa Nui is not an island where you could get lost as it spans only 180 square km, so we found it an amazing pleasure to explore the island at our own pace with our rented jeep, passing by the free roaming horses, cows and also looking out for big birds flying across the green fields. Rapa Nui was formed two and a half million years ago as volcanoes emerged from the depths of the ocean, so we could see volcanic rocks scattered all over the place.

Why is Rapa Nui named Easter Island? Well, the island was discovered by a dutch captain called Jacobo Roggeween, on April 5 1722 on Easter Sunday, that’s how the island got its present name. Rapa Nui was said to have been inhabited by navigators from Polynesia around 300 AD, but the island’s history took a tragic turn with the advent of slave trafficking. A Peruvian captain stormed the village town in 1862 and captured almost 1000 natives, forcing them to work as slaves collecting guano (seafowl excrement) on the Chinchas islands facing the Peruvian coast. They also seized the Maori, masters of the ancient Rongo-Rongo script. Some time later, natives remaining on the island were almost wiped out by smallpox, and by 1877, only 111 people survived. The tradition of oral culture and history of the island was thus lost forever. Today, there are roughly 4000 inhabitants living here.

 

Brown bird

 

One of the volcanoes on the island

One of the mysterious wonders of Rapa Nui is definitely the gigantic statues called moai, made by ancient natives presumably to immortalize the images of their ancestors. It is hard to imagine how difficult it must have been for the natives to move these 80-ton carved statues using their creativity, with ropes made from the mahute tree, tree trunks and sheer human strength.

Ahu Nau Nau (below) is a set of moai located on Anakena beach. It has 7 well-conserved statues that boast details such as tattoos and clothing that are not present in other moai.

 

Ahu Nau Nau

 

Some of the moai here had already lost some parts

Staying away from the sacred platform (ahu)

 

 

The 1000+ year-old moai

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 11:28 am and is filed under Easter Island. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.