Riding Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

[Tiffany]

Subtitled

"Going Boldly Where No (Wo)Man Had Gone Before"

As some of you may recall, a while ago I was asking and searching on various forums for anyone who had ridden Easter Island, further extensive research which mainly included asking down at the pub still hadn't produced any yes answers so I set off into the unknown, which to be honest is how most of my trips start, and certainly my first one which was pre-Internet (I was a slow IT starter!).

Naturally I went, and here are my two-wheeled tales of travel in Rapa Nui.

I had finished leading a group through northern Chile, Bolivia and Peru and was at a loose end in Santaigo, the capital of Chile. I found myself looking out across the Pacific Ocean, on the far side of this vast body of water is New Zealand and Australia but somewhere in between is a tiny pinprick of land - Rapa Nui (Easter Island) a volcanic island which is the most remote place inhabited by people on the planet.


The call of a remote place is just too irresistible for me and I found myself on a plane flying out over the Pacific in the hope that I'd find a motorbike of some sort that I could ride and explore this smudge of a place.
It's about a six hour flight from Chile, endless hours of ocean and then suddenly the island appears.



yep - volcanic with a rocky and rugged coastline.
The island is about 64 square miles, and has a total population of about 5,000 people, most of whom are Rapa Nui - original Polynesian inhabitants. The island is the most far-flung of the Polynesian group which stretches west to New Zealand and as far north as Hawaii.
The island is called Rapa Nui as is the language and the people who have been here for over 2000 years.

We call it Easter Island because it was Easter Sunday that a European first arrived here - he obviously wasn't the most imaginative of people. For hundreds of years it remained very isolated - and we're talking VERY isolated, just one ship a year used to call in with post and supplies. This was until the 1960s when the US was looking around for escape routes for the Space Shuttle. They spotted this remote island in the middle of the ocean and built a large runway - which they never used.

So from having outsiders arrive just once a year by boat the island now has almost daily flights to the mainland thousands of miles away.

I was met by Elias, my couch-surfing host, who had turned up on his scooter



He presented me with a lei (flower garland), a traditional way of greeting visitors and guests. We actually didn't travel from the airport on the scooter as I had a big bag and there were also two other people on my
flight who were being hosted by him so we bundled into a taxi and headed to his house.

Walking from his house down to the coast, I immediately see my first Moai



The giant stone heads which Rapa Nui is famous for, there are hundreds of them dotted around the island.

[Tiffany]

It's my first day and I'm on foot exploring, and walking into town. Photos don't usually show how windy it is, but this one does...



My hair seems to have a mind of its own, feeling the strength of the wind and looking around me at the cragginess of the volcanic rock, I was beginning to realise that riding a bike here might not be the easiest thing to do.

Further along I spotted my first horse


It was the first of many, this one obviously has an owner, but there are literally thousands of wild horses roaming the island - hmm, another possible biking peril.
The next horse I spotted wasn't quite as hale and hearty


Just the skeleton remained where it had fallen on rocks at the sea's edge. Next up were the human remains - the local graveyard, I've never seen graves like the stony one before.




For a short walk, there was plenty to see, as further on smoke was billowing around, I went to get a closer look, and found a group of locals with a buried bonfire, pile of vegetables and stack of banana leaves. They had created an underground oven using hot stones to cook food, the meat and fish had already gone in I'd arrived just in time to see the finishing touches






The careful placing of the veggies and the final stones followed by the leaves to trap the heat in and create steam to cook the food.


I return to the house to find Elias, my host preparing a distinctly non-vegetarian meal!


A large tuna on the chopping board, he was preparing his signature dish - ceviche. Raw fish marinated in lemon juice, with onions, chillies and herbs added. There are five of us in the house, and as I'm a vegetarian that means just four people to eat all that fish.

[Tiffany]

I just can't get enough of these heads - known as Moai, they are everywhere, some with fancy hats...




And this is the back view



It's like a compulsive disorder that I've got my camera clicking every time I see some Moai- similar to me and the llamas in South America, and who could forget the chameleons in Madagascar...

I reined in my Moai fetish for long enough to go in search of a bike, and found one


A Honda XR 250 - AKA the Tornado, as it is sold under its Latin American name due to the fact that Easter Island is part of Chile. Plenty of Spanish being spoken in amongst the Rapa Nui here.

It's fun to be back on a bike, though a bit different from the one I was on last week (does this cue for a completely gratuitous BMW/Volcano shot??) I think maybe After all it IS my Ride Report


So I'm now on this tiny Pacific island on a bike that is about a quarter size of the one above, but I'm having a lot of fun


The roads are quiet


And with my own set of wheels I can get to see even more heads - or moai as they are called.

[Tiffany]

The next morning I'm up early and climbing up the side of another extinct volcano to enjoy the view from the top


Naturally the view includes a few more moai in the distance

then I'm taking off for the next bit..

for more adventures.
I've got a pushbike to get around on today - to give me a bit more exercise.
The usual route to the pub


and a rather worried look from me - wondering of the camera has taken the shot I need or will I have to circle round and do it again?!


I've got a bit of a mission ahead of me - looking at the map of the island, I'm heading down to the massive volcano in the south west corner


The crater does NOT disappoint



Naturally, I need to get a bit closer, hmm, maybe that's a bit too close


that's better, I even manage a smile


And then feeling the need for a challenge, I set off cycling around the lip of the crater


The look of concentration on my face - trying to not get too close to the edge, and also pondering my Mum's reaction , she hates heights

[Tiffany]

Out on the bike again



I love the rugged coastline, it reminds me a bit of home, where the cliffs are granite.
there's not much wildlife on Rapa Nui, in fact apart from the horses, all I see are birds and the occasional rat. This bird let me get quite close to it


But insisted on keeping its back to me - I've got no idea what it is - some kind of pheasant maybe?
and another head - this one has a big belly and what look like hands as well


It's a lot of fun riding around on the bike, lots of open land that I can cut across to go get a closer look at everything - and I am being quite the "Mrs Nosey"
I've got a Stick with Nick sticker on the bike - one of those tends to go most places with me - he's some American bloke whose stickers I got sent.


It's not all open land and coastlines though


It's also quite tropical as well.


This was an Aussie bloke who I gave a lift to, I liked the mirrored image of the palm trees on his sunnies.
This moai looks like it needs a helping hand





I've ridden up to the north end of the island and the volcano Rano Raraku. the site where all the moai were carved whilst still in-situ in the ground and then cut away from the sides of the crater and somehow transported to the far reaches of the island.
The crater is literally littered with moai






It's an incredible sight.
here's something from some research I did - apparently the heads have bodies

[Tiffany]

It had to be done



I'm on the loose again after a bit of a night at my couchsurfing house


The warm weather has meant that we are eating outside. Bedtime tends to look a bit more cosy (brace yourselves, it's a Tiffany in bed picture coming up)......



I've got the luxury of a mattress on the floor, while Nuria and her husband had the bed.

I've got places to see and heads to visit, so no hanging around as I kit up and head off. I do seem tot be the only person wearing full bike gear on the island...


I reach the far south where the cliffs look out over the ocean and these small off-shore islets


These are the site of the origin of the infamous Birdman cult and legends.
Orongo, the site of the cult’s festivities, was a dangerous landscape which consisted of a narrow ridge between a 1,000 foot drop into the ocean on one side and a deep crater on the other. This was where Birdman priests prayed and chanted for a successful egg hunt. The purpose of the hunt was to obtain the first egg of the season from the sooty tern (bird) when they returned to nest each year.
Young men chosen by sponsors from their tribe from each tribe would compete, the race involved climbing down the sheer cliffs of Orongo then swimming to Motu Nui they would grab an egg, and the first contestant who swam back and presented it to his sponsor was the winner, his sponsor was then declared Birdman for that year, a very prestigious and important status position.and many would often die due to falling off the cliffs, drowning and being attacked by sharks. Not for the faint-hearted.

Moto Nui is the further of the three small islands.


The priests lived in small houses like this


They look more like hobbit houses to me.

time to race back to the house to get a picture of the sunset on the ocean - and a picture of some of the other tourists on the island


Looking out over the Pacific - it's indescribable

[James Rothwell]

What an incredible place, thank you for sharing!

[Tiffany]

Somehow horses are not the first thing that spring to mind when you think of Polynesia, but they are everywhere on this beautiful island, at somes there are scenes more reminiscent of Arizona than the South Pacific, like this cowboy with his dog


I was due to go out riding, but the horse I was borrowing became lame on the day so I didn't get to go.
Instead I made friends with this one that I met on the path


But then the rest of the herd turned up and they galloped down the hill trail, scattering people as they went


They were brought over by missionaries in the 1860's and apparently there are now more horses than people on the island, many of them just roaming wild and causing a bit of a hazard on the roads at times.

Another road hazard


Ah yes, the roadside cow sign - this is the Latino version which always seems to feature a bull ready to face down a matador. In the UK we have a gentle looking dairy cow complete with full udder


Meanwhile, this was the reality


She wasn't keen to move, and I do have a healthy respect for any animal (ever since the anteater turned on me in Brazil), so I gave her a wide berth and went round on the grass verge into a beautiful grove of acacia trees.



and out the other side where I was confronted by the bum of a moai


and then the beach

[Tiffany]

Today I was mainly riding coastal


and the audience consists of...


A bird of prey (can anyone help me to identify it?)

and naturally some of these


Tropical trees covered in liana - those only one thing to be done...my Tarzan impersonation




Loving the red dirt roads which remind me of so many other places I've ridden from PEI, to Madagascar and Australia.


I'm heading off to see these boys


and they deserve a sepia view as well

I'd gone to the most stunning row of Moai on the island


and was not disappointed.
Ahu Tongariki is the site of 15 heads in a row.


The area around the Moai is restricted so I had to do a bit of stealth off-roading to get a photo of me on the bike with the statues in the background. As usual, there was no-one around to take photos for me, so I used the self timer again.

[Tiffany]

It was the most impressive row of Moai


I'd had fun looking around, but now it was time to have a final ride around the island. Houses that look like Scottish crofts - a hemisphere away



It was birthday party time at the house - Elias was celebrating his 40th


What can only be described as a bin full of food had been simmering slowly on the outdoor barbecue


The trees had been strung with lights, creating quite a psychedelic effect


A Birthday cake made an appearance


I didn't manage to stay awake until the end of the party, sloping off to bed around 2.00am - these Rapa Nui know how to party
In the morning, all was quite as I took the bike back to the shop


This is the front view of the house, not the shop!
Elias gave me a ride to the airport, his hospitality had been fantastic, and I was presented with a shell and feather necklace, which I didn't manage to find out what the significance of it is.

I looked a bit odd, going through security with this big necklace and my bike gear.


My lasting memories of this beautiful island are of the fantastic people who live there who are so generous and hospitable, and the wonderful sights from the incredible Moai to the beautiful sunsets.
I'd had a great evening's ride last night, making the most of the sunset