Although there are many moai in the town of Hanga Roa, the best spots are outside of the town in the national park. In 2017 Rapa Nui National Park was taken over by the Ma´u Henua Polynesian Indigenous Community, and now visitors need to be accompanied by a guide.
We had arranged to join a tour with about a dozen tourists, and we were picked up at our hotel by the small bus this morning. The itinerary seems pretty standard and involved five stops. There are many other places of interest on the island and in the national park, but these five are highlights, at least of the eastern three quarters of the island.
Our first stop was Ahu Akahanga. Here there is an ahu (the platform the moai stood on) with several moai that have not (yet) been re-erected. This makes a good first stop, because you get see many moai, but also have a sense for how they would have appeared for two to three hundred years prior to archeologists re-erecting them over the last several decades. Actually, there are over one thousand moai on the island and so most of them are still lying down after having been knocked over. You can see the row of the moai below, all on their faces, as well as three of the hats or top knots lying in front of them.
Zooming out slightly, you can see the paina, the circle in front of the ahu created from stones, in which ceremonies were conducted.
I took the photo below to show the distance the moai traveled to get here; the hill just above the horizon to the left is where the quarry is, so the moai were walked all the way from there to the ahu here. It is not an especially far distance for a human to walk, but quite another thing to imagine these moai weighing many tons traveling that distance!
Here are two other fallen moai which are a short distance from the ahu.
Near the ahu are remnants of the former village, including this rock-wall garden. These were built such that they captured rain water and became rich environments for vegetables to grow.
A few minutes down the road we reached Rano Raraku, the quarry, which is on the slopes of an old volcano. Many of the most famous Easter Island images come from here, where many of the moai are buried such that the most visible features are their heads. Because of this, the moai are often thought and talked about as "heads," but really this is not very accurate since only about one third of the statue is the head (still, that's quite a disproportionate ratio when compared to an actual human body!).
As elsewhere, many of the moai at Rano Raraku are lying down, but in this case it is mainly because they fell over during transit and broke, such that they ended up abandoned.
More exciting to see, and much more picturesque, are those still standing, most of which were likely never finished or for some reason considered deficient.
Nicknamed El Gigante, the largest moai is actually still in situ. I really did not get a good photo of him, but he is lying in the rock below. He is largely completed except for his back. My understanding is the artist was probably overly ambitious and it is very unlikely he would have ever been successfully moved from this spot given his size. He is over 20 metres tall and weighs 145 or more tons!
Another interesting moai at the quarry is the kneeling Tukuturi Moai. He is relatively small , but the most interesting thing about this moai is that he is not standing. There does not seem to be a consensus around his origins or why his posture is so different than the others.
From the quarry you can see down to Ahu Tongariki, which is where fifteen moai have been re-erected. This is where we were headed next.
Besides the quarry, I think the most iconic photos from Easter Island are from Ahu Tongariki. The moai here have actually be re-erected twice, because they were knocked down for a second time by a tsunami in 1960. The heaviest moai ever erected is here, weighing 86 tons.
One of the moai has its topknot or hat, but the others' headgear is nearby.
After the tsunami, a Japanese man who owns a crane company in Japan donated cranes to support the re-erection of the moai. He has developed such a close relationship with the Rapa Nui people that they allowed him to borrow the moai below, nicknamed "Traveling Moai" and take it to Japan as part of a fundraising tour. Traveling Moai has returned now and is at the Ahu Tongariki site. As I understand, although about a dozen moai have left Rapa Nui (a sore subject for the Rapa Nui, since they consider most of these stolen), this is the only one that has returned.
Ahu Te Pito Kura, on the north shore of Rapa Nui, is a somewhat less memorable stop, because there are no standing moai here. The moai that is here, knocked over, with his headgear in front of him, is the tallest moai ever erected at 10 metres tall (but note that is less than half the height of El Gigante!).
I found it very scenic and peaceful at Ahu Te Pito Kura, so I took a few photos of the scenery.
Anakena Beach is a less peaceful spot than Ahu Te Pito Kura, but also very beautiful!
This is actually the only true beach on the whole island, and is said to be the landing place when humans first arrived. By the way, that arrival marks the final step in human colonization of the earth. Wherever else humans are permanently settled, they first arrived prior to humans arriving at Rapa Nui.
Diana and I were very hungry by now, so we enjoyed lunch with a view of the beach. Unfortunately, this was a spot where we wish the tour gave us more time, but unfortunately we had to leave before we really got a chance to fully enjoy it. I did manage to wade into the ocean and see two ahu that are here, but I had to be very fast!
We were the last two onto the bus, but we were on time for our 16:00 departure! We drove back to Hanga Roa through the interior of the island, and on a road that NASA paved with excess asphalt they had brought to extend the airport runway many years ago. At the time NASA had designated emergency landing spots all over the world for space shuttles and Rapa Nui was one of these. Although space shuttles are no longer flying, Rapa Nui still enjoys a lovely road connecting Hanga Roa and Anakena.
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