Day 11 - Rapa Nui

Tukuturi, the kneeling tiki, looking down from Rano Raraku to Tonjariki

Two half-day tours, again with the studly yet knowledgeable Hugo.

Farthest out, Motu Nui, the island of the sooty tern

  The morning is the southernmost part of the island, beyond the airport.  We start with the dry-stone ceremonial village of Orongo, where the Birdmen and priests lived.  There were seven men in the annual Birdman competition, one from each clan.  For a week, they were kept off together in secluded preparation, each trying to size up the competition. Then in the morning of the contest, they would climb down the cliff with the totoro buoys they had picked and woven themselves, paddle a mile to the island, climb the cliff, find the first sooty tern egg, bind it to their forehead with a bandana, climb back down, paddle back, climb the cliff of Orongo and win the right to live alone for the year as Ultimate Ruler.  It was a tribal system that replaced the “my moai is bigger than yours” system, but it didn’t have long to live before the White Man sailed into view and changed things forever.

       At Orongo are also many petroglyphs, lots of birdman symbols, one stone that looks like a turtle, and a fresco with human hands.  It's an art gallery in stone, all anonymous works by skilled hands working with prehistoric tools.

  After that we slog up the volcano to the brim of Rano Kau and look out over the islands and down into the caldera with its totoro reeds.

       Then on to Vinapu and an ahu wall that looks for all the world like Cuzco.  It’s easy to see how Heyerdahl - and anyone else who had seen the Inca fortresses - would think perhaps the ancestors of these islanders had sailed west from Peru instead of east from Polynesia.
  At the end of the morning we pick our way down steep steps to Ana Kai Tangata cave, where rough waves crash in from the sea.  How you juxtapose those three words can mean “the cave of eating men” (where men eat) or “the cave of the man-eater”, which may partially explain the allegation that some Rapanui were cannibals.  The walls are decorated with colored shreds of pictograms... as well as a rock shape that looks very much like a polar bear to me.  In a prehistoric cave it would have become a painting with plant-colored dyes highlighting the snout and haunches.  Hugo sees it when I point it out to him.
  All this in a half-day.
  The van drops us off in town.  I attach myself to the Canadian professor, his son and friend for some tuna ceviche.  A short stop at the hotel for a change of clothes; it’s getting hot so I change into tropical gear:  white shorts and a white shirt.
 

Hanga Roa, the island's only town, as seen from Puna Pau

We start the afternoon with Puna Pau, the quarry where all the red topknots (pukao) came from.  There’s a great view of “Our Town” - Hanga Roa - spread out below.  It’s the only town on the island.

  After that, a short distance away is the ahu platform with the seven moai, one for each clan:  Ahu Akivi.  They had been toppled, breaking into pieces, but have been puzzled back together at great expense and effort.
  Then Hugo takes us off the grid:  to Ana Te Pahu Cave, which is actually not part of the predefined tour.  No pictograms, no moai... just a basalt cave with water dripping from the black rock ceiling.  I kid Hugo that he waited until I was bare-legged and in white for this.  There is no light and the stone is black and jagged.  And slippery.  For half an hour we make our way through this lava channel, guided by light from one or two flashlights and several cell phone screens.  The hands of Hugo and his driver Koi (from Les Iles Marquises, the Marquesas) are strong and welcome, and I’m not the only one who avails themselves of some assistance.  Jokes echo back and forth in the dark.  Then we literally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I’m somehow the first out, greeted by a spiny tree whose branches block the way.  I push them aside and scramble up the embankment, followed by the two Swiss nurses.
  Then Kent, the Canadian professor, appears, his head bleeding all over his clothing.  At the very end, he didn’t duck and has cut his scalp badly.  The cave gods have taken their sacrifice.

Tahai

  Everyone slogs through the marshes and piles into the van, to be deposited at Tahai on the coast on the town’s north side. One moai, complete with frightening, all-seeing eyes, stands alone; five more partial ones are aligned nearby.  I decide to accompany Kent and the boys to the hospital, in case an extra hand is needed, and to lend moral support to Hugo, who feels guilty.  My role ends up being limited to staying with the van, which has been left with motor running in the haste. The hospital does nothing but hand Hugo some bandages and disinfectant, so the Canadians are returned to the hotel.

       Hugo and I go back to pick up the others, although his mind is elsewhere.  I tell him about my tourist in France having a seizure in the backseat as I drove, and hope it helps.  But I doubt he’ll tell me he got a good night’s sleep when we meet tomorrow.

Day 10 - Rapa Nui

Rano Raraku, the quarry where all the moai statues were born

Slept like a log.  As requested, at 8:00 there’s a gentle wake-up knock at my door (no phones or TV in the room) so I can be ready for the all-day tour.  Breakfast is served on the terrace - omelet, the Peruvian/Chilean breakfast of champions evidently - and on the dot Kim’s significant other Hugo appears.  We do the rounds of the hotels, gathering up our cosmopolitan crew:  Americans, Italians, all sorts of Spanish speakers... Hugo does it all in Spanish and fluent English.

     First stop to buy a park pass for the island:  $60 U.S.  But bills must be pristine or they’re rejected.  It seems there were counterfeit bills a while ago, so if they’re torn or raggedy or written on they’re refused.  (It was the same in Peru, but I didn’t know why.)

      Then it’s on to Rano Raraku, the quarry from whence all the moai came, regardless of how far away they eventually stood.  (The topknots came from elsewhere.)  Hugo explains how the stones were cut, extracted, and shaped. It’s much the same as how the Inca cut stone from their quarries for their walls. But even if the two cultures didn’t communicate with each other, I guess there really aren’t multiple ways to perform such a feat using primitive tools.  As to how they were moved, that’s one of the island’s mysteries, although legend has it that they “walked”.

 
    After that we climb up into the crater of one of the island’s extinct volcanos to admire the lake inside the caldera.  A place of calm.  The reeds are totoro, the same as in Lake Titicaca.  This is a place of considerable beauty but few shade trees.  Hugo explains to us about a race held every year.  It involves young men making flotation devices out of the reeds, swimming across the crater, carrying hands of bananas up and down the slopes... but I forget the exact order.

       Then it’s on to Tonjariki, the first platform - or ahu - of moai we see, and the closest to the source, being just down below on the promontory. How they ever got them down here without breaking them I can’t imagine.  This ahu has the largest number together of the island:  15 in all, of different heights and only one with a topknot.  All were knocked down at one time, and the words “tidal wave” are pronounced.  But some were probably knocked over in fighting between the different clans on the island.  There is much supposition about everything on this island.  Much mystery.
       Back to town for lunch, and then off again for the North Shore.  First Papa Vaka with its petroglyphs, then Ahu Te Pito Kura on La Perouse Bay and its strange large rock that sets compasses wild.  Hugo says may be a meteorite.  I can well see the natives seeing this thing fly in from the heavens, leaving a flame-like trail, and thinking it was something the gods were giving them.  It has obviously been smoothed into its round shape - too smooth otherwise - with another orb at each of the four cardinal points.  I imagine tribal meetings being held here to make grave decisions.  But that’s just my imagination talking.

       Finally, on the beach at Anakena, Hugo explains more about the moai and ahu platform.  One of them, the one standing all alone, was set upright by Thor Heyerdahl and his crew in 1956; it took them nine days.  

       Then Hugo sets us loose for an hour, which I spend - as in my childhood -  searching for seashells along the water’s edge.  (The Pacific is still roiled up from yesterday’s rain, but I won’t know that by comparison until tomorrow.)  Shoes and socks off, I get my rolled-up pants wet hopping over waves as the tide comes in.  I end up triumphantly finding three tiny white barnacles and a piece of a bigger, darker shell.
       The rendez-vous point for the trip back is the snack bar and as I don’t have a watch, I get there early.  The passion fruit juice I order from a bilingual behind the bar, who calls me “honey”, doesn’t come, so Hugo sees to it.  From that moment on, I’m Honey to him for the rest of the tour, and he becomes Sweetie.
       Drop-off back in town and a homemade empanada from the shop down the street, which Kim’s desk replacement Jordi (from Barcelona) heats up for me.  I’ve kept up with the young people all day.  Now to bed.

Day 9 - Lima - Santiago - Rapa Nui

The Andes lost in the clouds

Pretty much a day lost in travel.  And lost is an appropriate word.  After Amerigo drops us at the airport, I check my bag in, then we go check my daughter in for her flight home.  Her plane will leave half an hour late (minimum, I think) which makes her miss her connection in Dallas and will add five hours to her trip home.  Rightfully miffed, she still sees me off and I watch her disappear down the hall of Lima Airport.
       For my part, the airline misplaces my bag in Santiago and it takes so long to find it that I have no time to get Chilean pesos.  I leave for Easter Island with my clothes but only Peruvian soles and U.S. dollars, and that’s how I meet Kim.
       There is a huge difference between Peru and Chile.  Not only have we traded Andean flutes for guitars but everything in the Santiago airport feels and looks American or European.  I go from feeling very “blonde” among Incans - with their bronzed complexions, shiny black hair and long straight noses - to being just like everyone else... and far less tall respectively.
       After an omelet on the flight from Lima to Santiago and another on the one on to Easter Island, I’m all egged out.  But the customer service is excellent on these LAN South American flights, no matter how short.  It takes over three hours to reach Santiago and another six almost to Easter Island!  After the first half hour of this last leg, nothing below but the Pacific - or alternately cloud cover.

       We have quite a bit of turbulence on the final approach and I’m glad to see the black volcanic cliffs rise out of the clouds.  Once we touch down, the pilot brakes slowly and uses up the entire strip to stop our 767.  I chalk it up to rain on the tarmac (more on that later).  Out the windows there are no moai yet, but much vegetation, which surprises me after all I’ve heard about the island’s barrenness.

       No one waiting at the airport with my name but there is a  taxi available so...  One problem though:  only those dollars and soles to pay with, no Chilean pesos.  I explain to the driver and when we get to the Hotel Manavai, I run in to ask if the desk could bail me out.
       And that’s how I meet Kim the Whirlwind.  She pays the cab and explains that the owner had me down as supposedly arriving the previous Thursday, so to him I was a “no-show”.  Good thing I have a print-out of my reservation!

       No sooner have I reached the hotel but the skies literally open up.  It rains for hours and hours, as if some celestial tap were left running by a careless god, or his heavenly bathtub were overflowing.  I cringe at the possibility of having to visit the island in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin.  Not my idea of a tropical paradise.  So I say a silent prayer to whoever the local rain god is and hope for the best.
       The downpour does give me the opportunity to have a long and fun conversation with Kim though. Over a cup of tea she brews us, she tells me about her years on the island, and schedules me for two days worth of tours with Hugo.  The second wonderful thing she’s done for me already.
       Around dinner time, Kim hands me an umbrella and lends me her sweet tween son to show me where I can buy something to eat.  (No restaurant in this hotel; only breakfasts.)  A bottle of water and another of Chilean red wine from the small supermercado.  Next door to it a man is grilling over a big barbecue and it smells wonderful!  So I get a grilled kebab of cerdo (pork), sausage and onion to take back to the hotel.
       Then it’s bed after this past night spent in planes.  The moai will still be there tomorrow.

P.S.  I learn on the next morning’s tour that the airport was lengthened to almost 4 km by NASA as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle, just in case.  Never had to be used for that, luckily, but the Concorde supersonic jet landed there twice.

No longer barren, Rapa Nui has come back from the edge of extinction

Day 8 - Lima

My daughter stayed up and watched a movie last night, so I’m on my own this morning.  After an omelette - which seems to be the breakfast of choice in Peru - and tea in the bar, I hop in a taxi for a far-distant museum the desk clerk told me about.  He promised me Inca artifacts made of gold.  Unfortunately, I get there only to find it won’t open until 10:30, so it’s back to the hotel.  Money for nothing, but the taxi driver gives me a discount because the museum was closed.  (He may also have realized he told me it was the wrong time of day and I actually would only have had 20 minutes to wait, but...)  So the highlight of the trip turns out to be getting a glimpse of the U.S. Embassy, a true bunker - as is now the norm - near the museum.  At least I see what Lima looks like outside of downtown.

       I wake my daughter and we head off to find her a cup of coffee, back the same way as last night.  A zig to the left on a quieter street and a zag to the right and we stumble on a terrace (across from an - ugh! - Domino’s Pizza) where I enjoy a marvelous hot chocolate and she a mochaccino served by a waiter who speaks excellent English and French as well as his native Spanish.  And people-watching is fun in any city.  At one point an entire group of young people hefting huge drums walk past.  We’ll see them again later finishing up a street concert in front of a building in the restaurant district.

        Then it’s just around the corner to the Church of Santo Domingo (him again), which interests Andy because it houses the remains of St. Martin de Porres, the continent’s first black saint.  (I need to find out more about him.)  She seems to want to meditate or pray so I sit quietly and watch the people.  The old priest says mass and sometimes an old woman with henna hair sings a capella.  Her choice of repertoire is strange though for a Catholic church service.  As we step inside the church, she breaks into “Glory, glory, hallelujah” - but I don’t think it was meant for us.  Then later it was Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” with new Christian lyrics.  What a trip!

       The most fun is watching a three-year-old local girl escape her dad and go right up to the chancel area in front of the altar, which is one step raised from the rest of the stone floor.  She silently walks the entire width of the church, right foot up, left foot down, as if walking along a sidewalk curb.  Then she plops herself down on the prie-dieu on the far side of the altar.  When her mother appears beside the embarrassed father, whose frantic gestures the child has stoically ignored, the girl hops back diagonally from black marble square to black square, like the bishop on a chessboard.  I keep thinking of Christ saying, “Suffer the little children to come unto me” and I hope no one will chew her out.  No one does.

The Street of Restaurants

       After that, it’s lunch time and this time we do find The Street of Restaurants.  We look at them all, then settle on the first one, the historic one, El Cordano (1905), where all the presidents eat, living - as they do - right across the street.  Again servings are huge, and delicious. Neither of us can finish, but my breaded fried calamari are perfect. Flavorful and not heavy with oil.  No lemon required. 

St. Francis of Assisi

     We drop by the Monastery of St. Francis (of Assisi) to take a peek at the catacombs.  Unwittingly, we pay an entrance fee which turns out to involve a tour.  The guide does far better in English than I would in Spanish, but she keeps calling us “guys”.  “Guys, come!”  “Guys, look!” Her accent is thick and she hurries us along at a fast pace so the tour is pretty useless.  Still, the stucco decoration and woodwork are amazing, not to mention the library of 25,000 antique books rotting quietly away in Lima’s coastal humidity.  What a shame!

President's Palace

       The greyness of the Lima winter gets to my daughter so we head back to base camp where she sleeps it off and I pack.  Our separate flights are red-eyes (1:30 and 1:55 a.m.) and Amerigo is picking us up at 11 with his cab, so we opt for dinner in the noisy bar/restaurant of the hotel, noisy because it’s Friday night and this is the capital, but so delicious that we regret the previous night’s to-and-fro-ing on our quest for dinner.  My daughter chooses causas - a typical Peruvian starter of mashed potato and other ingredients, like little cakes - and a corn chowder; I have rice with shrimp.  And of course a pisco sour each - a small one this time - to toast the end of our week-long tour.

       We’ve seen so many beautiful landscapes and met so many kind, helpful, gentle Peruvians, especially those of the mountains.

Plaza de Armas, with Cathedral of Lima to left