The first stop on the Historic Pathways tour took us to the crater of the extinct volcano Rano Kau on the southern tip of the island. It is an impressive round crater dropping two hundred metres below to a lake covered with floating reeds. Apparently there is no bird life here even though it looks like there might be.
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| Rano Kau crater |
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| Close-up look at the reeds at the bottom of the crater |
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| Hiking around to the ocean side gave us a different perspective on the crater |
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| A Moai head on the coast, one of a few with painted eyes |
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| Rapa Nui map showing the different sites |
On the rim of the crater is the restored ceremonial stone village of Orongo. We were introduced to the Birdman Cult - each spring warriors would gather in Orongo from different villages and compete. They would jump off the cliff into the sea and swim to the islands just offshore to find the egg of the tern. The chief of the first person to return with the egg in tact would become the supreme leader of the island for the year. For obvious reasons, competition was fierce. These competitions ended when Christian missionaries arrived in the 1860s.
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| Birdman cult moai |
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| The islands to which the competitors swam to find the tern's egg - what a beautiful stack |
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| This is supposed to be a woman with two heads that got chopped off. |
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| Stone village |
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| Petroglyph in Orongo |
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| The way these huge stones are stacked reminded us of the Inca stone walls in Machu Picchu |
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Cotton plant in Orongo
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| The best lunch we had since we arrived in Chile - fresh tuna with veggies fresh and grilled. It was so good we had the same thing twice on the island. |
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These two moais are right at the waterfront in Hanga Roa, the only accessible ones that are not in the National Park.
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| These are the only moais on the island that face the ocean. The reason is because the village is by the sea, between the moais and the ocean. |
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For our pre-dawn astro, we went back to Anakena Beach but stationed ourselves on ocean side, looking at the backs of the moais. The milky way first came up above the moais and then as dawn neared, it moved behind the moais. What an awesome experience! |
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We went back to Tongariki for a last look. There was no visible sunrise that day, we were lucky to be able to see one the day before. We saw lots of disappointed photographers walking away from the park. |
We returned to our airbnb and were surprised by a visit from Marc Ross Shields, the author of the book "Rapa Nui - A Visual Journey to the Navel of the World". Marc is associated with Green Island Tours with whom we had booked our tours. He came over to gift us each with a copy of his book with its stunning photos. Marc lives on the island with his family.
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| Marc with our group leader |
This wraps up our Easter Island tour. We had six hours on the flight back to Santiago to catch up on sleep and get ready for the next adventure in Patagonia.
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