El misterio vive. A Rapa Nui journal.
Some trips are born in the heat of the moment. Others come from way back, originating from yellowing books, B&W films or stories told by elder relatives a lifetime ago. This is one of them. But yet again, it shouldn’t be a surprise: I doubt that many people arrive at Rapa Nui by accident. You don’t fly here on a whim.
On paper there are enough reasons to be disappointed with this island. It’s not a beach destination: in fact, there’s only one stretch of sand in the whole place. There’s also a distinct lack of other tropical must-haves: a coral reef, blue lagoon or cinematographic views that would command a place on the cover of Condé Nast magazine. On top of that there’s only one luxury hotel, itself at the centre of an ugly spat – but more on that later.
Yet, despite all this, many come, as I did; many also long to return, as I do. We stayed as long as we could and it wasn’t enough. I wished it was for longer. I wish I was still there.
Why is that? What makes this place so captivating that so many, from King Hotu Matu’a to the French man who owns our hostal, arrive and don’t ever leave?
The best explanation I’ve been able to give is that Rapa Nui has something. There’s something here, however resembling of Kurt Russell’s The Thing this phrase sounds. A colleague at work defined it nicely: it’s an answer. An answer to a question you haven’t yet figured out how to pose.
You’ve arrived at the end of the road and it really feels that. According to some theories on human migrations Rapa Nui was one of the last outposts where Homo Sapiens arrived, everything else having already been conquered by our ancestors. Every now and then this idea hits you and when it doesn’t the distances do: it’s 2,500 km to the next inhabited island (Pitcairn, population 50); a further 1,000 for Chile. All there’s around is sea, sea so open and multi-coloured that it’s easy to think to be on an ocean-going vessel.
And yet you aren’t. This is an island, an island with a quaint little town called Hanga Roa: bumpy roads and trees, churches and tourist shops, flowers and small supermarkets with notices for the arrival of fresh milk and salads kept in refrigerators.
Liking Hanga Roa comes surprisingly easy; getting in tune with its rhythm requires even less effort. Give it a day and you’ll find yourself driving slowly into town, windows down, head bobbing to the reggae tunes aired by Radio Rapa Nui. Unconsciously you’ll copy the attire of those you’re meeting on the street: shoes splattered with the red mud of this island. Utilitarian trousers. A well-washed T-shirt. Let your hair be coiffured by the wind, get suntanned, don’t shave. Just listen to the music and wonder what all the tropical places listened to before Marley. A crooner from the 1950s come on. Perhaps that.
Not everything is hakuna matata here. Rapa Nui’s Chilean government is enlightened enough in letting a Parliament of sorts exist on a clearing not far from City Hall, a Parliament proclaiming the right to self-determination. I’ve a feeling that the French would be a lot less permissive in Polynesia. Yet the Carabineros were a lot less laissez faire in the way they cleared the Eco Village occupation a few years ago.
There’s a road, Apina I believe, running between the two small ports of Hanga Roa. Along it are the Navy barracks, a number of commercial exercises – a bank, a couple of restaurants – and, then, a fenced building with a démodé sci-fi look, something out of Space 1999. It’s the luxury hotel I mentioned earlier. The views there would be splendid if only one was willing to ignore the dark banners fluttering from poles and the many sheets of corrugated metal. Whoever managed to turn modern minimalism in Genghis-Khan-meets-Mad-Max is a visual genius.
It doesn’t take much to figure out the reasons for such a powerful protest. The signs say it all: a case of alleged land-grab perpetrated with the connivance of the government. The squatting occupation that ensued was ended with excessive vigour from the Carabineros, who used pellet guns and rubber bullets to evict the protesters, wounding many.
Better to turn to the sea. Here the Pacific’s long waves are crashing on the rocks under the stoic eyes of a horse whilst two dogs decide to follow us. We walk through the small port where a class of teenagers is learning how to paddle canoes under the eyes of teachers and of the local fishing community. The colours are bright to a level never seen in London.
We arrive at Orongo, the village whence the yearly Tangata Manu challenge took place, and the weather had changed again. Gone are the Bermuda vibes, wiped away by a cold wind and clouds that are more reminiscent of the Isle of Skye. A few steps away from us the coast falls precipitously towards a graphite sea; surf breaks on Motu Nui islet where the young clan champions had to go to fetch the eggs of the first migratory manutaras.
Today no one braves the rocks and waves to capture an egg. We walk sombrely around the village while, above us, three birds are playing in the riot of thermals that must be swirling, unseen, above our heads. A Kyuss song, evidently written for places and moments like this, bubbles to my mind.
I'm standing alone on the cliffs of the world
No one ever tends to me
Sitting alone, covered in rays
Some things are so my mind can breath
The north coast is the remote corner of an island that’s already way out of the way. The further away from Hanga Roa the least passable the road gets, until it becomes little more than a rock-strewn goat path patrolled by munching horses lost in thought.
Waves and the rustling of leaves are the sole soundtrack of our trek. There’s another couple of hikers out, and we play a silent relay where no one reaches the other. We walk speaking quietly, completely forgetful of our own worries from out there. This island has the same effect of drinking from the river Lethe of the ancient Greeks.
Only a wooden sign and a low stone wall mark the village of Te Peu. A rock-strewn meadow where the flotsam of human activity is still very much visible: the foundations of a long house, stones aligned in neat lines, drill-holes filled with rainwater; a manavai mulch garden; the ruins of an ahu platform.
Moai lie face-down in the grass. A head, decapitated in the process, has been rolled up and now eyes the back of the platform on which it once stood, hollow eyes still obstinately refusing to even cast a sideway glance at the sea.
It’s funny how moai, this island’s alleged party-piece, are the last hook in the longline of attraction that has fished me out of the sea and has landed me here, unwilling to leave. They’re Rapa Nui’s biggest attraction yet I think I’d still love this place even without them. Still, they puzzle me and if there’s a place where to sit down and ask oneself why, then Te Peu it is. Not really to ask why they were built – why did we erect the Parthenon, the Pantheon, Taj Mahal, Süleymaniye Mosque? – but why they were torn down. Uzbeks toppled Lenin from Tashkent’s main square for a reason; Iraqis did the same with Saddam’s statues: their time was up. Was it the same for Rapa Nui? I look around for answers but there’s only a cow beside us and she’s sworn to bovine secrecy.
Up until the 1960s no moai stood on the island; they all lay face down in the grass. Now a handful of sites have their moai back up, a move that would perhaps cause horror amongst archaeologists – who, now, thinks that painting Knossos’ palace was a good idea? – but that, personally, I’ve no problems with.
Akivi is the closest such place to Te Peu and, perhaps, the most peculiar of all. Seven moai stand to attention in a neat row between a thicket of eucalyptus and a ploughed field, the lawn on which they stand descending gently towards the blue sea. The Akivi seven are the only ones facing that direction.
Legend has it that these are the seven original explorers, the seven men that king Hotu Matu’a sent on the voyage of exploration that culminated in the discovery of Rapa Nui. As we amble about the place I try to conceive a journey of thousands of kilometres into the unknown, the excitement of discovery, the return and then doing it all again. In an age with no compass, no maps, no GPS. In a sea with no natural features but the stars at night and the sun. Finding an island a tenth of the size of London in a stretch of ocean vaster than Latin America. These guys have all the rights to be as smug and proud as the Mercury astros in that famous picture. Funnily enough, those Mercury astronauts were seven too.
The Akivi seven are all different. Some are tall and slender; others are short and bulkier, though all seem to be caressing a beer gut with more than a hint of satisfaction. One of them has a head so much bigger than the rest of his body that I’m sure he inspired Peter Adolph, Subbuteo’s original designer.
The moai are depiction of real people, I tell myself as we leave Akivi. They aren’t idealised representations such as those Roman generals that all had a six pack, plump Crassus included. Tongariki, where fifteen of them (moai, not Roman generals) stand, backs to the sea, reinforces that idea.
You can see Tongariki from far away; precisely from the slopes of Rano Raraku. The old quarry, littered as it is with broken, half-done or complete moai is a perfect view point and a puzzling experience at the same time. Imagine you’re entering a car assembly line, expecting people to be working, robots to be buzzing, the noise and smell of production. But there’s no one. The assembly line is empty: half-finished vehicles lie abandoned, tools and equipment left where the workers – on strike, perhaps – have dropped them. This is what it felt to enter Rano Raraku. Moais ready for shipment stood at odd angles; other lied on their backs, evidently broken in transport. Some still were embedded in the mother rock, signs of chisels all around them in the soft tuff. What happened? Did the work crews really down tools, sung a Rapa Nui version of Inti Illimani’s “El pueblo unido jamás vencido” and left the bosses scratching their heads? As a cherry on this cake of oddity a lady walked a pig on a leash.
I got side-tracked. I was planning to talk about Tongariki. For a few, blissful minutes on an overcast afternoon, we are alone there with the two rangers. The Fifteen sit in the shadow, the kr-umph of waves chatting amicably behind them. We sit in front of them thinking of how lucky we are in being there. Spiritual people might be thanking some higher being.
I rummage in my backpack and fish out a photocopied number of Rapa Nui Journal. In it is the translation of the poem He Moai by David Menezes Salvo, winner of the second place of a 1991 poetry contest.
Moai, when will you tell us the truth?
How many stories do you have to tell us?
Moai, where are you looking at?
The Tongariki Fifteen remain silent. Two more tourists arrive. From far away the wind carries the barks of a dog.
There’s only a beach on Easter Island: as it’s to be expected, it comes with a bit of tourist infrastructure. What is there are a couple of shacks with potato sacks as sun screens, Mahina beer by the bottle and heavenly pescado del dia cooked in coconut milk. Coffee is available too, but only mocaccino flavoured Nespresso. “No llevaran en el avión” is the smiling answer when you enquire about a normal flavour pod. Still, there’s instant coffee to be had while chickens and cats stomp around in a strange feathered-feline alliance. And Rapa Nui’s answer to Jack Johnson schmoozes out of the speakers. Intermittently, Anakena beach is lashed by rain showers that chase the few sun-bathers away.
Sunsets are a heart-warming spectacle everywhere on the island, but Ahu Tahai is the hotspot. A selected few – even a dozen makes a crowd here – come to witness the event, including two Rapa Nui chatting in their aboriginal language and another couple playing music. Not even two stray dogs having a very public romp can break the idyll. But what about sunrises, we wonder?
We drive through the night on the coastal road, swerving to avoid pothole and the occasional sleepless equine. A soft mist hugs the low bushes, a salty mist that can only be made of sea spray.
It was still dark when we parked some way off the entrance to the moai. There’s only one light around us, oozing from the gatekeeper’s lodge. A beacon flashes intermittently from a small lighthouse; besides that, it’s dark. Yet we can see where we’re going.
The Milky Way is above us, arching from horizon to horizon. The sky is dotted with stars, twinkling planets and slow-moving satellites; then there’s that massive white band, a streak of iridescent white caviar stacked against that absolutely dark dinner plate that is the sky. I’ve never seen such a spectacle. Standing against the spare wheel of our washing machine on wheels I had my own Pale Blue Dot moment. I’m not looking back in but, even from the other way round, I can just begin to understand the enormity of what’s out there. Cast against such a backdrop everything I know and see – the low rock wall, the silhouettes of the moai, the crashing waves – is irrelevant like a bee’s fart in a hurricane. It all matters shit and it’s such as refreshing thought: you, me, Trump, China, the Mueller report… it all equates to precisely the square root of diddly squat. Ah, it’s so nice.
We give up on Tongariki and drive on in the aurora. Te Pito Kura – once the tallest moai – appears like an unhoped-for saviour. We’re alone but for a few horses we can hear huffing nearby. The sun paints sky and clouds red before the rotating horizon reveals it, us and a swaying palm as the only witnesses. The wind smells of yellow-flowered bushes whose name I don’t know, and of eucalyptus. Today we will be leaving and there’s regret at that notion, but there's also undeniable satisfaction. Satisfaction for having made it here and for the big trunk of experiences and memories we’ll be bringing back home. Thank you Te Pito o Te Henua, the Navel of the World.
