Ana Kakenga

I slept in today, which was nice for a change after two consecutive days of waking up before 6:00 to try to catch the sunrise. Since I didn’t have my scooter to rush around the island with, I decided it would be a good idea to hike along the coast North of Hanga Roa for an hour or two. Steve and Debbie, the couple from my hotel who I explored Ranu Raraku with, told me about a cave they visited on that side of the island that was made entirely of lava rock. Hiking to the lava cave was a perfect way to spend my morning.

Cruising around the island on the scooter was definitely convenient, but it actually was nice just to spend a few hours walking to get a feel for things. I enjoyed watching horses graze in the distance and seeing the gigantic waves come into shore and crash against the black lava rocks below. The weather was perfect today, and after hiking for about an hour along a rugged dirt road, I finally came to a cairns that indicated the entrance to the lava cave.

When I first saw the opening to the cave I doubted I was in the right place because it was so small. A hole in the ground about two feet wide and three feet tall was all there was to crawl into, and after briefly looking around to see if there was any other entrance I decided to just go for it. Squeezing myself into the tiny hole was a bit of challenge, but the biggest challenge was finding my way around in the dark. I didn’t pack a flashlight with me, so all I had was the light from my iPod screen to guide me through the cave. The iPod couldn’t light up the whole cave in front of me, but if I pointed it directly at my feet as I crouched down I could see the just enough of the ground to walk. Fortunately the cave is only about a hundred feet long, and after a minute or two of walking with the iPod, there was enough light from the openings on the other end that I didn’t need it anymore.

The lava cave is called Ana Kakenga, but is also known as ‘The Cave of Two Windows’. At the end of the cave opposite from the tiny rocky entrance, two openings in the rock about six feet square let in bright beams of light from the outside and provide spectacular views of the coastline. I loved being the only one in the dark, mysterious lava cave and staring out of the openings down towering black lava cliffs, and across the bright blue ocean. I found a ledge next to one of the openings that was perfect for setting my camera on, so I took a few minutes to set the timer and take a picture of myself at the end of the cave.

I had to hike fast to make it back to Hanga Roa because I had arranged a scuba diving trip for 2:30 in the afternoon and left the cave at a little after 1:30. Fortunately I made to Mike’s Rapa Diving Center right at 2:31, and within minutes was in a small boat cruising out to the ocean. I had read in my guide book that the ocean water at Easter Island is known for being incredibly clear, so I was excited to try out the diving here. I descended into the water with a local guide and two Chilean travelers and spent about 45 minutes exploring Easter Island’s underwater world. The coral at the bottom of the ocean was shaped differently than any I’ve seen before, and I spotted a few spiny sea urchins and several long, thin fish that looked like a cross between a barracuda and an eel. Our guide led us through a couple of small caves at the bottom of the ocean, which was way fun, but to be perfectly honest, I’ve been to much better diving sites before. I definitely wouldn’t come to Easter Island just to dive, but it was a fun way to spend an afternoon, and it’s always great to get a feel for what diving is like in different parts of the world.

A couple of other travelers I met told me I absolutely had to see a ceremonial dance show while on Easter Island, so tonight I headed to a tiny venue on the coast that features a show called Matato’a. I loved Matato’a. For an hour and a half I watched from the second row as elaborately dressed Polynesian dancers performed animated war dances and hula-style dances to the beat of a rock band in the background that played guitars as well as ukuleles and bongo drums. I only had one small objection to the show: the male performers were very scantily dressed, and I felt a bit uncomfortable when they turned around to reveal completely exposed bottoms (except for a small piece of twine that held together a tiny loincloth). Altogether though, it was a great way to get a feel for the local music and culture, and the perfect way to spend my last day at Easter Island.

Rano Kau

I crawled out of bed at 5:45 this morning to make a second attempt at catching the sunrise at Ahu Tongariki. Driving along the south coast of the island in the pitch black night was thrilling and intimidating at the same time. It’s a thrill to me to be half-way around the world exploring an obscure island on my own, and it’s liberating at the same time to feel like I can go anywhere I want, anytime, and do whatever I want, but part of me just doesn’t trust that scooter and I felt uncomfortable cruising on a dark, pothole-filled road with only a dim headlight to guide me. After a half-hour of driving alone through the darkness, I finally arrived at Tongariki, and might have missed it if I hadn’t spotted the small dirt parking lot to the side of the road.

It turned out that 6:30 was the perfect time to arrive at Tongariki. While driving towards the East end of the island I noticed the sky slowly grow lighter, and I was afraid that I might miss the sunrise, but fortunately I arrived just as the sun began to create an orange glow from below the horizon. I love sunrises, especially when they’re at the incredible places I’ve visited while traveling. Some of my favorite moments while traveling have been catching the sunrise in Venice; Borobudur, Indonesia; the Taj Mahal; Petra; Machu Picchu; Ayers Rock; and Mount Everest. I think I’ll have to add Ahu Tongariki to that list. As the sun slowly rose towards the horizon, the sky turned into a bright orange, that faded into yellow and blue. The clouds above the horizon were lit up with pink light, and as the sun rose over some cliffs behind Tongariki, the moai cast long shadows. I got some great photos of the moai silhouetted against the colorful sky, as well as a few of the bright landscape and long shadows.

Since Rano Raraku is so close to Tongariki, I decided I had to catch it in the favorable morning light. The site was apparently closed and nobody was at the entrance to welcome visitors, but I noticed a couple people wandering through the moai on the hillside, so I went ahead and enjoyed the scenery with them. The couple, two French travelers, helped me get some great pictures of myself with the moai as a backdrop, and I enjoyed spending an hour or so wandering through the deserted place. Again, some of my favorite moments while traveling are the times I’ve been able to visit some of the most phenomenal sites in the world when they are completely deserted. Conveniently enough, those times usually happen to coincide with the sunrise (am I the only traveler who’s willing to wake up a little earlier for a much more incredible experience!?) Wandering through the moai along the deserted hillside was otherworldly. As I snapped a few pictures of the bright green grass, perfectly blue sky, and the gigantic, mysterious moai, I was reminded of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, and felt like I could have been wandering through the movie.

On my way back to the South end of the island, I stopped at a site called Ahu Vinapu, where several moai on the coast lay toppled onto the grass. Ahu Vinapu is well known for the way its builders constructed the ahu; the stones fit together perfectly just like ancient Incan architecture. According to my Lonely Planet book, some anthropologists speculated that islanders sailed East from Easter Island to mainland South America, where they influenced the cultures of the people there. It’s interesting to consider that the Incan stone structures in Peru that fit together so perfectly may have been inspired by the indigenous people of Easter Island.

As the morning wound down I became very conscious of the fact that I only had my scooter rental until 1:00, and made sure to visit the most distant, inaccessible places around town before turning it back in. I headed straight for Orongo, the ceremonial village that sits at the very top of the Ranu Kau volcanic crater (walking up the dirt switchbacks that lead to the top of the towering volcano would have been a death march). Orongo was interesting, and contained a few stone structures representing what the ancient homes of the indigenous people would have looked like, but my favorite part of the visit was the end of the trail around the village, which offered an incredible view of the ocean and two small islands to the West, the gigantic crater to the East, and a few intricate petroglyphs carved on nearby rocks. The Rano Kau crater must be one of the most scenic natural landscapes I’ve ever seen, and watching the sun set over the crater yesterday was nice, but seeing the bright colors of the grass and ponds down below was probably even better. I snapped a few photos side by side so that I can stitch them into a panorama in Photoshop… I’ve never done that before, but it’ll be interesting to experiment with.

The last site I visited on my cherished scooter was a couple of moai on the far end of town. The moai were impressive, but compared to what I’ve already seen at Ahu Tongariki and Ranu Raraku, they weren’t anything mind-blowing. The scenery was nice though, with the wide expanse of ocean as a backdrop, and I enjoyed snapping a few more photos of the landscape. One of the moai had giant inlaid eyes made out of coral; the only such moai I’ve seen on the island. Archeologists speculate that all the moai once had such eyes… but to be honest, I like the look of the ‘blind’ moai much better.

I returned my scooter exactly at 1:00, then collapsed on my bed, exhausted from a day that was already filled with exploring the greatest sites of Easter Island. After napping for a few hours I woke up and began to catch up in my travel journal, but was pleasantly interrupted by a man from Orange County who invited me to go to dinner with him and his wife.

The couple was named Linda and Braulio, and are originally from Shanghai and Mexico City, respectively. We wandered down to a restaurant overlooking the coast, and as the sun set outside the windows behind us the conversation quickly turned to our favorite travel stories. I told Braulio all about nearly getting scammed by an angry taxi driver in Lima, riding a dilapidated train in the outskirts of Mumbai and getting fined and (I believe) scammed by the staff patrolling the cars, and meeting a scammer in Bangkok who approached me and attempted a scam word-for-word that I had already read about in my Lonely Planet book, among many other stories. Braulio told me about going to a pub crawl in Rome, getting lost on the way home, then wandering through the city looking for his hotel until 6:30 in the morning; and getting invited to a bar in Athens and enticed to buy drinks for some pretty girls… only to find that the staff of the bar demanded an exorbitant amount of money for the alcohol and the company. After hearing those stories I’ve realized that it probably does me a lot of good that I don’t visit bars while traveling. Linda and Braulio were great company, and made for intelligent, interesting conversation. It’s always great to meet up with fascinating people while traveling, and that dinner was a perfect way to round out the day.

Ranu Raraku

I headed back to Anakena Beach this morning. One of my favorite things to do while traveling is trying to catch the various sites I visit in just the right light for photos. The sky was crystal clear this morning and I got to Anakena at about 9:00; since the beach is on the East side of the island, it was the perfect time for photos. According to Rapa Nui legend, Anakena Beach is where the Polynesian king, Hotu Matua, landed with the original settlers of the island. On a small hill overlooking the beach there stands a single moai that was re-erected by Thor Heyerdahl (the Kon Tiki guy) with the help of a few islanders. Anakena is also famous on the island for its powdery white sand and favorable surf. The beach was completely deserted when I arrived, and it was the perfect opportunity to snap a few photos of the moai on the coast. I spent an hour or so circling the moai and snapping picture after picture; enjoying the soft white sand under my bare feet and the warm, breezy, crystal clear weather.

Until late this morning I had been impressed with what I had seen on Easter Island, but to be perfectly honest, it hadn’t quite lived up to my expectations. That changed pretty quickly when I visited Rano Raraku this afternoon. Rano Raraku is a small, dormant volcano on the southeast end of the island that the Rapa Nui people used as a quarry to extract lava rock to carve the moai out of. Apparently the facial features of the moai were carved before being completely extracted, then the moai would be removed and transported to other parts of the island. The result is that there are several giant moai at Ranu Raraku that are only partially carved out of the rock. The real attraction at Rano Raraku, though, is the 40+ standing moai scattered across the face of the volcano and inside the crater. I walked slowly through narrow paths leading past the moai, observing each facial expression and the tilts that each one had naturally taken on. Most moai looked pensive and stoic, although a few sported wide smiles. One moai had tipped over to an angle about 45 degrees to the ground, and the narrow pathway led directly beneath his gigantic eyes and nose. While at Ranu Raraku I happened to bump into a 50ish couple named Steve and Debbie, who are staying at my hotel, and spent the rest of my time there exploring with them. After wandering through the moai on the front side of the volcano we ventured up the slope and into the large crater on the other side. The crater is filled with plants and a gigantic lake in the middle, and on one edge of the crater sit several large moai. I enjoyed seeing a few more moai, but my favorite part of the crater was hiking to the top on the East end of it, where we had a fantastic view of Ahu Tongariki down below.

After a quick second visit to Ahu Tongariki with Steve and Debbie I stopped at the Papa Vaka Petroglyphs, a giant basalt slab in the ground covered with carvings of tuna, sharks, turtles, and canoes. Further inland I stopped at Ahu Akivi, an ahu with seven moai. Ahu Akivi is unique for several reasons. First, it is the only ahu that isn’t on the coast (or at least the only one I that I know of). Also, it is the only ahu to feature moai facing the sea. Very little is known about any of the ahu or moai on Easter Island, but one notable observation about Ahu Akivi is that the moai are oriented such that on the summer and winter solstices they are exactly facing the sunset. On my way back to the main road I stopped at Puna Pau, a quarry used by the ancient islanders to obtain red lava rock for moai topknots, called pukao. It was interesting to me to see a handful of giant topknots scattered around, but I was more impressed with the view of Hanga Roa from the top of the hill at Puna Pau. After spending the past couple of days exploring the island, it’s nice to get a view from above and see the little world I’ve been wandering around in.

Earlier today Steve and Debbie recommended that I visit a small recreation of an ancient Rapa Nui airport, so I decided to make that my last stop of the day. I knew roughly where it was from what they told me, so I cruised past Hanga Roa on my scooter and up the edge of a hill on the opposite side of the airport. I wasn’t completely sure that I was headed in the right direction, so I was a little discouraged that the road kept climbing higher and higher up the edge of the hill, with no village in sight. After driving high enough that Hanga Roa was a few thousand feet below, I finally noticed the beginning of a trailhead on the side of the road. I figured that I might not find the village I was looking for, but at least I’d have some other serendipitous adventure. I walked only fifteen or twenty feet up the trail before coming to the edge of a massive volcanic crater. The crater was at least a thousand feet across and was covered in bright green grass with hundreds of tiny ponds in the base of the crater hundreds of feet below. The opposite end of the crater had eroded away such that a giant opening revealed the wide blue expanse of ocean stretching south of the island. I recognized the sight from a few pictures I had seen around town, and realized I was at the top of the gigantic volcano Rano Kau. I hadn’t planned on visiting Rano Kau today, but the sight was incredibly scenic, and I took about a half-hour to hike along the edge of the crater and enjoy the sweeping views.

After hiking back to the trailhead I rode my scooter to the top of the road, only a quarter-mile or so away. As it turned out, I had been on the right road all along, and the village, called ‘Orongo’, was right at the top. Unfortunately the village had just closed for the day, but I happened to bump into Julia and Katarina, the two Polish girls I met yesterday, and followed them back into town for dinner. We ate at a place on the coast called ‘Au Bout du Monde’, and sat at a table that gave us a perfect view of the sun setting over the ocean as we ate. I ordered shrimp with rice, bananas, and a thick ginger sauce, and talked for an hour or so with Julia and Katarina. Naturally, when I’m traveling I tend to meet a lot of other people who love to travel, and we all shared some of our favorite travel stories. Julia and Katarina told me about their recent visit to the Galapagos islands, and I told them about visits to Angkor Wat, Bhutan, and Kruger National Park. We also shared some awkward and embarrassing travel stories; I told them about waking up at 4:30 this morning to catch the sunrise on the other end of the island (an hour too early due to me misunderstanding what time-zone I was in), only to realize halfway there that I didn’t have enough gas to make it, then turning around and going back to sleep at the hotel.

Easter Island

I reluctantly left my lavish room at the San Cristobal Tower at 6:00 this morning and headed to the Santiago Airport to catch my flight to Easter Island. Fortunately it was easy enough to doze off on the airplane, and after napping for a few hours, watching ‘The Blind Side’, and blasting a few tunes on my iPod, I had arrived at Easter Island.

Before planning my trip out here I really had no idea how far away Easter Island is from the mainland. A flight from takes just over five hours; about the amount of time to fly from Los Angeles to Honolulu. Easter Island is halfway between Chile and Tahiti, and attracts many travelers making round-the-world trips, as makes a fantastic stop mid-way through the Pacific.

I love the feeling right when I get off the plane on a tropical island. I guess I haven’t felt it too many times before… I can remember feeling it in Ko Samui, Thaiand and in Honolulu about fifteen years ago. There’s just something about leaving the plane and feeling the warm, humid, tropical air for the first time. As I walked down the tarmac towards the terminal I was excited to experience the beaches, diving, and warm climate of the South Pacific, and I smiled as I reminded myself of the reason I came all the way out here… to see the gigantic stone heads; also known as ‘moai’.

After checking into the modest ‘Residencial Martin y Anita’, I rented a motorized scooter and hurried out of Hanga Roa, the island’s only town, to spend the rest of the day exploring. I loved riding that scooter today. Even though I felt like Lloyd Christmas from ‘Dumb and Dumber’, it was just such a blast to ride along the deserted coast of the island, enjoying the scenery and scanning the landscape for my first moai sightings. I’m surprised by how beautiful the scenery of Easter Island is. I guess I never really thought about it before, but the island is beautiful. It reminds me a little of the English countryside; mile after mile of rolling green hills passed by on my left, and to my right cliffs of black lava rock plunged into the deep blue ocean. Easter Island is also filled with horses that roam freely. I don’t know whether the horses are wild or not, but every few miles I’d pass a herd of brown horses feeding on the grass or galloping along the coast. The scenery was just idyllic; between the rolling green hills, perfectly blue ocean, exotic lava rock cliffs, and herds of roaming horses, I felt like I could have been in a dream… and the dream was only made sweeter by discovering groups of ancient moai scattered along the coast.

Just a few miles outside Hanga Roa I stopped at a site called ‘Ahu Akahanga’; a site where six giant moai lie toppled on their faces. Very little is known about the moai or the ahu (giant platforms used to support the moai), but for some reason nearly all moai face inland. At Ahu Akhanga two different platforms about a quarter-mile apart feature a few toppled moai, with another toppled moai between the two at the edge of a small bay. I met a couple Polish girls who happened to be at Ahu Akahanga at the same time as me, and we took turns taking photos for each other in front of the ahu. I can only imagine what that place must have been like hundreds of years ago when the moai were still standing.

Further down the road I stopped at a site called Ahu Tongariki; easily my favorite part of the day. Ahu Tongariki features a gigantic ahu in immaculate condition with fifteen moai standing on top of it. Each moai is slightly different; some shorter than others, and with different sized noses or other facial features. My favorite of the fifteen was one that had a gigantic topknot on his head made of red lava rock. According to my Lonely Planet book, moai with topknots were fairly rare, and it’s believed that the knot represents a hair style that was popular among the original inhabitants of the island. The topknots weigh about as much as two elephants, but somehow the islanders were able to raise them onto the heads of the moai. Apparently most of the moai at Ahu Tongariki had topknots at one time, but in 1960 a tsunami hit the ahu, scattering the moai and their topknots. In 1992 a Japanese company re-erected the moai at Ahu Tongariki to restore the site to what it once was; although they only put a topknot on one of the moai.

A few more minutes on my scooter took me to Anakena Beach, a beach famous on Easter Island for it’s powdery white sand and for a small ahu with about five standing moai on it. I was lucky for most of the day and got perfectly warm, sunny weather, but unfortunately my luck turned at Anakena Beach and a relentless storm started pouring rain. I was so excited to actually be at Anakena Beach that I circled the moai a few times in the rain and walked the length of the beach. When I was sufficiently soaked I found a small shelter from the rain: the overhang of a tin shed used by national park employees. Waiting under the tin roof was easy, as it gave me a chance to look through all my favorite pictures from the day, but after about a half-hour I decided I needed to figure out what I was going to do to escape the storm for good. With seriously limited options, I decided to drive twenty minutes back to Hanga Roa in the pouring rain. Although the weather wasn’t ideal, I enjoyed taking a different route through the countryside and seeing as much of the island as possible.

After a hot shower and about another hour looking through my photos, I headed to a tiny café called ‘Ariki o Te Pana’ for a bite to eat. My Lonely Planet book recommended the empanadas, and I wasn’t let down. I ordered a seafood empanada and got a crispy, flaky pastry filled with fresh seafood and a spicy Chilean sauce. Altogether the day has been a success, even despite the rainstorm. I’ve seen some of the best moai of Easter Island, got some incredible pictures, and still have a whole lot more to explore. I’m excited to spend the next four days here hiking, exploring, and scuba diving. Everything about Easter Island is so unique and I’m excited to discover it all for myself.