Easter Island was so awe inspiring and so separate from the rest of my Chilean adventures that it deserves its own page here. Day by day, this is my trip as I told it to my little black journal.
Day 1:
We’re here at Easter Island after a 5 hour flight! It is a Pacific paradise that’s somehow a mix of Gilligan’s Island and Hawaii. Plus it boasts a civilization with a mysterious, dramatic history. An interesting combination considering the current vibe here. I can’t quite figure it out, but believe a friend’s assessment that local island culture is very secluded and removed from that of the tourists, despite the fact that everyone seems so kind and welcoming.
I like our hotel manager a lot. His name is Manuel and he is from Santiago. He had a perfectly modern life before moving here and even worked in the States for a while, but when he met his wife, who is a native islander, he decided to come live here. What a story! I can’t even imagine doing that, although many people have warned me not to fall in love with a native islander. Anyway, Manuel probably experienced the exclusiveness of the culture firsthand. I wonder what my experience here would be like if I didn’t look so obviously foreign and blended in with the Rapa Nui people– probably not very different since I would still be an outsider. With 3,000 people on the island, everyone must know everyone else.
Hanga Roa is the only town on the island, and it truly is tiny. There is only one main road, which we live off of, and then roads going down to the pier and closest archeological site, to the Church, and to other parts of the island. Today we walked through all this and to the very interesting Anthropology Museum, and I was overwhelmed by how small this place really is. What would it be like to grow up here with no other land for 3,000 miles? What would it be like to see Santiago after that? Your world view would be drastically different.
One of my friends confirmed this when she went to an exhibition of local children’s art outside the Museum. Many of the works included images of moai, and others presented Easter Island as the center of the world. Some people have refered to this place as the “Navel of the World,” suggesting some kind of cosmic importance for it. I think this is why we are so curious about the island’s culture. There is probably a lot to learn here if we look in the right places.
Our best hope for learning about the real Easter Island would be a local stone sculptor who’s a friend of a friend from Santiago. Apparently, he’s willing to show new parts of the island to the outside world, and could show us things “that even National Geographic doesn’t know about.” I pray that we actually get to meet him and learn something worthwhile from it. I want to believe that my experience here will be more meaningful than just a set of incredible pictures.
Day 2:
Today we went to Orongo after breakfast to see the Ceremonial Village and the Ranu Kao volcano. The Ceremonial Village is from the era of the Bird Man Cult on Easter Island. This is a religious tradition that seems totally unappealing to me. Each clan on the island would send a man to compete in the Bird Man competition, which entailed jumping off the cliffs at Orongo, swimming through the shark infested waters to the two small islets, and waiting there, sometimes for months, for the one of the seagulls to lay the very first egg in one of the caves.
Then the man that found it first had to swim back, making him the “Bird Man” for the year. His family would rule the island until the next annual ceremony. Call me crazy, but this seems like an incredibly counterproductive way to express religious devotion, and many accounts suggest that it caused a lot of misery on the island.
However, there are counter productive ways of expressing devotion in almost every culture, and there are elements of my own that I find ugly and unnecessary. Like McDonalds. Or flu shots. Or visiting the Division of Motor Vehicles.
Later that day, we went snorkeling in the same Bird Man area between the main island and the two little islets. I am happy to say that the waters are no longer shark infested. And I loved seeing the tropical fish in this clear, clean water. I saw one that looked like Rainbow Fish from the children’s book, and then a “school” that swam in formation. When the leader changed direction, every other fish followed at the same instant. Unbelievable.
