Easter Island, Day 2

DAY 2

We got up Sunday morning and went to Mass, which was absolutely packed and really neat. It’s a regular Catholic service, but all of the music is Rapa Nui, which was pretty neat to hear. It was also kind of cool to see so many people at Mass—we had to stand in the back along with probably 35 other people because the pews were full.

After Mass we went back to the house, packed our backpacks for the approaching voyage, and were about to leave when Napohe showed up at the house. He offered to drop us off at the beginning of our planned route, so we wouldn’t have to walk out of town, and we gladly accepted the offer. Before dropping us off, Napo pointed out the wild guava fruit growing along the road, and told us how to tell if they were ripe or not. This turned out to be some pretty important information, and we ended up eating a fair amount of wild guava during the trip.

We started off at Vinapu, which is where the best-constructed ahu is located; the stones are cut so well that people thought they were done by the same Peruvians who built temples like Machu Picchu. It was pretty impressive to see, the giant stones are all cut precisely to fit together and you really wouldn’t be able to slide a piece of paper between them.

We spent the day walking and walking and walking in the rain and the sun, on the road and the coast, walking and walking and walking. We saw a lot of gorgeous scenery, tons of horses free-range grazing, and a fair number of ahu and moai that most people probably don’t see (they were off of the road and down by the water). Our goal for the day was to reach Tongariki, the site of 15 moai together at the base of Rano Raraku, which was the quarry where all of the moai were made. By the time 5 in the evening rolled around we were realizing that we still had at least 2 hours worth of walking to do, both of us were exhausted, and it was probably going to be dark when we reached our final destination. Right around the time we were trying to decide if we should keep going or start looking for a place to set up camp, a pack of about 7 guys on motorcycle happened to drive by us heading the opposite direction. They all waved or at least smiled in a friendly way, and the last one stopped to talk to us. It was immediately obvious that he was an American, and he said that they were looking for “the quarry,” which is Rano Raraku, the place that we were hoping to reach that night. We let him know that he was going to wrong direction, but since all of his motorcycling buddies had already continued on without him he kept going up the coast to catch up with them.

No very surprisingly, about 10 minutes later we heard the entire pack making its way toward us along the road, and when they reached us they stopped again to get further directions from us. After talking for a bit they realized that we were all ultimately going the same direction, and they offered to give us a lift to Tongariki, which they unceremoniously referred to as “the 15 heads.” KellyAnne and I both spent a bit of time chatting with the boys giving us rides, and we learned that they were basically rich spoiled New York kids (they appeared to all be in their late 20’s) who travel around the world spending money and doing exciting things. However, our during our limited interaction with them it was glaringly obvious that they must miss the real point – the awe-inspiring beauty and unbelievable feats of human engineering that constitute the Easter Island moai, for example – every where they go. They had come to Easter Island to surf after spending a week snowboarding in the Chilean Andes. Woop-de-doo. They couldn’t even find one of only three volcanoes on an island of 69 square feet because they were too busy zooming around on their rented motorcycles. We left the backs of their motorcycles feeling very fortunate that we at least were both on the same wavelength when it came to walking as a preferred method of exploring the island.

Really, in all of the interactions we had with other tourists, I feel like we probably ended up enjoying ourselves more, spending less money and leaving with a far deeper understanding and knowledge of the island than any of the others. I feel like rather than being restricted to a less in-depth discovery of the island because we wanted to do it cheaply, we got a much more “insider” tour that included meeting (and really talking to) locals and seeing far more sights because we did it slowly and on foot.

We arrived, rather unceremoniously on the motorcycles at Tongariki, and both agreed that it was kind of disappointing to have showed up at one of the most important sights of the island so quickly and without the time to take it all in we would have had if we’d arrived on foot. With that, we decided to turn around and walk down the road a little ways, so we could see it again for the first time, and pretend we had walked there instead of riding. As we walked down the road with our backs to the ahu, we noticed some people fishing and barbequing in several caves along the rocky coast. Curious, we headed that direction, and soon found ourselves invited to drink Piscolas and chitchat with some Rapa Nui families who had come to spend their Sunday afternoon on the far side of the island. They turned out to be very nice, and made the excellent suggestion that we spend the night in the cave they were currently using. It was a beautiful place to camp; right next to the water, on the back side of Tongariki, fully protected from the wind and weather and with plenty of room to pitch a tent inside the straw-lined cave. We agreed that it was a grand idea to camp in that very spot, and after they left we set up our tent (a project that ended up being incredibly complicated and probably took a solid 30 minutes), ate dinner, and went to bed. The sun had gone down, we were totally beat and we didn’t have a flashlight or anything to occupy our time with, so it just kind of seemed like the next logical step.

Unfortunately, we didn’t bring sleeping pads, and even though we were both totally ready to hit the sack early that night, neither of us slept very well because it turned out to be kind of uncomfortable. Oh well.