Easter Island, Chile – Part 2 (Post #103)
Mike writes…
After a great full-day tour with our guide Elizabeth on Saturday, we thought we would see some of the other sites on our own Sunday. After our great breakfast at the Tekena Residencial late sunday morning, we set on a hike along the coast towards the volcano at Orongo about 5km east of the Hanga Roa village. A pamphlet provided by the tourist office in town guided us through several signposted sights along the way including the airport which has a 5km long runway. Originally, the runway was much shorter however at some point the U.S. convinced the Easter Islanders to lengthen it to accommodate the Space Shuttle in case of an emergency landing.
Though there are not many trees on Easter Island, along the base of the volcano, we passed through a forest of introduced trees including Eucalyptus and Cypress. We really enjoyed our hike which, at times, reminded us of a 50mile run we did to Mt. Hood along the PCT in Oregon, U.S. Here is a photo we took from a spot shortly after the forest of introduced trees. About mid-photo it is possible to see the town of Hanga Roa (the only one on the island).
About 2 hours after leaving our Residencial (maybe longer than 5k huh?), we arrived at the rim of the Orongo Volcano. We were awestruck by the beauty. Here we were reminded of a similar crater we saw in Iceland. However this is much larger. Here is a picture of Michele and i on the volcano rim taken using a tripod and remote control.
After dragging ourselves away from the beauty of the volcanic crater, we continued along its rim to a ranger station (much of Easter Island is a Chilean National Park). After a few minutes of hesitation (many of the signs are only in Spanish and we coud not decide if the entrance to the ceremonial village was open), we went to the ranger hut and paid our $10 per person to walk the short pathways through the ceremonial village of ovular housing foundations to a couple of scenic overlooks. The ceremonial village of Orongo was the site of the Birdman competition which determined the leader of the indiginous Rapa Nui (people) centuries ago. The competition involved youing men climbing down the cliff side from Orongo to the sea below, swimming to some small islets just offshore, collecting a sooty tern egg, swimming back to the main island, climbing back up the cliff and show off the egg. The first young man back with an unbroken egg earned the Birdman title for his patron leader. Our readers will have to wait for a picture of the islets to which the compeditors swan until we post about our diving because these islets, called the Motus, were the site of a couple of our fantastic dives here at Easter Island.
After taking dozens of pictures at the scenic overlooks by the ceremonial village, we started our trek back down the side of the volcano to Hanga Roa. Unfortunately, by this time, we were really beginning to get hungry. We are complete idiots because we had plenty of snacks we could have brought with us but we just did not plan to be out hiking for as long as we ended up hiking and did not expect to need anything except the 1 litre of water we brought (no, this was not really enough). Anyway, we did stop by the rim of the volcano again for some more pictues and then continued on down through the forest.
On the way back to town, we stopped at a site we, for whatever reason, missed on the way up/out. This was Ana Kai Tangata which was a ceremonial cave overlooking the sea that is adorned with paintings of marine birds. While we are not posting any pictures of the paintings, here is a picture of what we actually thought was a bit more impressive — the waves crashing at the cave.
The volcanic shoreline here in Easter Island reminded me of childhood trips to the North Eastern coast of the U.S. (Maine) which is similarly rocky (i do not remember that it was volcanic like this however).
After checking out the cave for maybe one half an hour, we hurried back into town and to a small convenience store to buy ourselves several bottles of water. We were relieved that after 5 p.m. on a Sunday in a Catholic country (that being Chile), there was a store open for us to buy some water and some snacks.
Tomorrow we fly to Santiago.
Hold on for a blog about our awesome diving experiences (we hope to have some underwater photos).
See yuh!
Tags: Category #27: Chile
Michele Harmon
Woo hoo! That is an awesome picture of the waves! Well they all are. 🙂 Can’t thank you both enough for taking the time to keep all of us up to date. Only a couple of months to go. It must be bitter sweet.