16 Apr EASTER ISLAND, HANGA ROA

Easter Island is one of the most isolated inhabited places on the planet. It sits about halfway between the Chilean coast and Tahiti and somehow many many thousands of moons ago a crew of intrepid Polynesians tested their skills and sailed into the Pacific in search of something else. What they found would later become known as the Southeastern most point of the Polynesian triangle, Easter Island. Today travelers come from far and wide specifically to see the Moai. The monolithic stone sculptures that were carved in a quarry called Rano Raraku and then were transported to their final platforms upwards of 12 miles away. The largest Moai that made it to a platform was 86 tons. Each village had a platform and on it sat the living faces of deified chiefs. Getting them to the platforms today remains a mystery. But the general consensus is that they were moved standing straight upright. In a sense the Moai walked themselves to their platforms and in doing so they proved that they were worthy of representing the chiefs they were meant to become. If a Moai fell during transport it was abandoned and a new one was carved. The remarkable thing about this area is that you can see all phases of the archaeology. You see where the Moai were carved, the routes where they were transported and the finished platforms. I found myself admiring them for hours trying to piece together how and why this civilization spent so much of its energy on this undertaking. Easter Island is an open walled museum. Everywhere I stepped I felt the history beneath my feet.