Arrival at Easter Island and the city of Hanga Roa

Talk about remotely located: Easter Island (or Rapa Nui in the local language) is reachable by airplane from Santiago de Chile from the east or Tahiti from the west. Either way it's a five hour flight covering the 3000 kilometres over the ocean to the (very) small island. It's fun to see that the little airplane on the screen showing the progress of the flight is larger than the projection of the island. Hanga Roa International Airport is very small, but it's possible for a large Boeing to land here. The landing strip streches over almost the entire island. Apparently this landing strip has been built by the NASA in order to use the island as an alternate landing area for space shuttles.

My first of three days on this island started really early: in order to catch the flight from Santiago de Chile I had to get up at 3:30am.

Anyways, I was expecting to be welcomed on the (semi-) Polynesian island by a large group of women with only a dress made out of banana leaves and to be covered in welcome gifts. That was unfortunately not the case. Rain! And a lot of it, the plane could barely land. That was really not what I was expecting.

The island is very small; around 4000 mostly indigenous people live there, almost all in the capital city Hanga Roa. Internet is sparsely available and no broadband connections are around. Television is also not like we're used to: there are the national channels of Chile and Rapa Nui has its own television channel featuring two hours of local news per week. But what tourist needs hat on a subtropical island?

The entire island is a Unesco site and all around the coast you can find the peculiar large statues (Moai).

The first of these can already be found in Hanga Roa. There are the sites Ahu Akapu, Ahu Tahai and Ahu Tautira (see pictures with this entry). This meant the first encounter with the Moai and it was very special. At these sites the Moai were erect, which is certainly not the case for most Moai. In the last century there was a large tsunami which knocked down all the Moai on the island and it is considered too dangerous to erect all of them. Some have now been erected, but all the others are still laying on the ground. Apparently all Moai face land inwards (all but on one site: see day three). It is said that this is to look after the islanders, but no stories on the Moai can be confirmed. The knowledge is long lost in history and no written documents remain.

The three sites differ a lot. Ahu Tautira is just one erected Moai of around 4 metres. The other Ahus however consist of much more Moais. Several are erected in a row, forming some sort of peculiar jury. And one Moai is like they were in the old days: with coral for the eyes and a large hat (or haircut as some say) of red stone. Very impressive!

The first day ended at a local place where demonstrations were given on traditional dances of the island. Of course I had to take a picture with some of the female dancers.