On-the-Road Tales

I took a 1/2 day tour to get up the middle part of the island. The locals who give the tours are very interesting. They tell you the party line they learned in tourism school. Then they tell you the stories they grew up learning and what parts of history the missionaries decided would be better not to propagate. Thankfully there are families left that remember those things. We visited one of the platforms that had an elaborate base. The platform design contains rocks that interlock in a design similar to those at Machu Picchu. Thor Hyderall (sp) believed Easter Island was settled by people originally from Peru, not Polynesia. He wrote Kon Tiki which ‘put Easter Island” on the map and actually built a reed boat and successfully made it from Peru. He used the interlocking rocks to help substantiate his theory. Unfortunetly, despite all that effort – it has since been disproven. While there may have been some explorers from that area, DNA tests have established the people came from the Polynesian isles. We also visited a platform where the 7 statues face the ocean, only place on the island. These are meant to represent the first 7 explorers and they are looking back towards their homeland. Every other Moai face inland to protect over the people. We also stopped at the Topknot quarry, a volcanic quarry of a red material. The topknot which fits perfectly on top of the statue was made only from this special quarry, the red representing the royal blood. They were cylindrical and are believed to have been rolled to their destinations.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.