RAPA NUI DAY TWO: Part Two

Last stop on Day Two was at a place called Tahai.


By the sea, as you can see, and it is a group of five moai, on an ahu, and two lone moai.

Also there is a fallen down moai and a boat house base.


This is our guide, Andrea, by the boat house.


Tradition has it that, when the two canoes, each bearing a thousand people from Hiva, landed, they turned the boats over for shelter. The form was continued and it is actually not a bad design for a fairly temporary house.

The foundation stones are laid, the boat ribs and keel pole are erected and lashed into place and the whole lot covered in reeds, grasses and banaba leaves which actually makes it quite weatherproof. (Note: Banaba leaves are leaves from the banaba plant that grow well on Rapa Bui.) Add a patio out front and you have a fair old beach house.



Behind Andrea you can just make out a fallen moai, broken in three. They always break in three apparently.

This one though was being nicked by some locals for an overseas collector who wanted it as a water feature or something back home. How he was going to get it home is anybodies guess. Hand luggage rules are pretty flexible but, come on!
Anyway the locals messed up and broke it, were caught moai handed so were roundly punished. One of them though was a stone mason and he made some eyes for an adjacent moai to show his repentance.


Scary stuff ain't it.

I did mess with the colour a bit though.

The eyes are quite interesting, Usually the whites are made of coral and the pupils of obsidian, which is a volcanic glass.

One way of telling if a fallen moai was ever erected, as opposed to the erectors being clobbered or having an attack of the 'sod its' before they got it into position, is the eye sockets.

The sockets were always carved after the moai was erected.

So, no sockets, it has never been erected and vice versa.

There is some debate as to whether or not the eyes were in place all the time or just popped in for special occasions. Can't see how that can be resolved really

What is for sure is that very few eyes survive or have been found on the island. This could be because not many moai actually had eyes or, possibly because coral, apparently, burns very well so the coral whites could just have gone up the chimney.


The group of five moai (well, four and a half really. The one on the left end is a bit of a titch) is really just a group of five moai. I don't remember anything special being said about them,







They do look a bit spookier courtesy of iPhoto though.












The two odd bods, one with eyes and one without, again, apart from the story about the repentant stone mason, were also unremarkable.








In so far as 15 metre high, 20 ton plus, blocks of stone, carved with stone tools little harder than the stone being carved, transported God knows how for 20 kilometers and popped in place by the sea, with eyes and top knots can ever be unremarkable.








So that was Day Two.

Day Three to follow if you have the stamina.

Kevin has put loads of wedding pics on The Cheese Empanada blog, link somewhere on this page, if you want a change from moai.

BJ