RAPA NUI DAY THREE Part Two

Top billing goes to Dana.

With the Navel of the World.

I thought the nosey parkers and voyeurs amongst you would go straight to the navel anyway.

Good innit!

Thanks again for the day Dana. It was good craic. 'Craic' is Irish for good conversation, laughs and a jolly good time. That it was.


Another Important Announcement.

Noushka has produced a fine 7lb 4oz son at 0315 on Thursday, 10 May 2007. Called James.

What's this with the 'J's'. Jack, Joseph and James? What is that all about?

Nephew Robert and family will not read this. He put in a dodgy firewall round his computer and it has turned round and bit his ass. The house is now internet free. Even the signal that is paid for can't get in!

But I'm a great uncle again. Cool.

And Robert may get to go to Wembley after all.

Congrats all round.


Ahu Tongariki



Next stop, Ahu Tongariki. Arguably the most impressive ahu on the island.

Fifteen moai on a superb platform, near the quarry.




This shot was taken from the quarry by a Swedish whaling expedition in 1903. They were supposed to go to the Antarctic but they sort of diverted and never got past Rapa Nui and Tahiti.








Tough decision eh?

Ice, cold, dead whales to butcher, penguin stew every night with no tomato ketchup? Or balmy Polynesian islands and their fabled attractions?

Not exactly too close to call is it?


But, as is usual on Rapa Nui, the ahu has a bit of previous form.

It is built where it is, on the scale that it is because:

1. The ahu site is dead near the quarry at Rano Raraku, and it's all downhill to the coastal plain.

2. The coastal plain goes right down to the sea shore, easy for haulage.


So.

Just make a platform out of hundreds of tons of stones. Then carve fifteen, 20 to 30 ton, statues out of rock with stone tools. Sixteen if you count OddJob standing guard at the entrance.

Then, somehow, move statues down a mountain and across a coastal plain, no more than a mile or two and erect.

Oh, and then carve 32 eye sockets.


Deceptively simple instructions.

This is not your flat pack cupboard though.

This is your actual, big time, make it up as you go along mega-project. And nearly 900 of the things have been recorded already on the island. Lots still in the quarry, many fallen by the wayside, some even erected.

Can't help but be impressed, can you?

Our guide, Andrea, who is Rapa Nui, told us that there were several theories about how the moai were moved. Sleds, rollers etc. All wrong.

From their oral tradition, the Rapa Nui know the statues 'WALKED'!

The same way that you might 'walk' a freezer across the kitchen to get it in place i.e. rock it onto the back two corners and move one corner at a time. Into position.

It gets better. The bases of the moai, ex quarry, were sloped so the statue was taller at the back than at the front. So, by the time they had been walked into position on their back edges, these had worn away and the bases were more or less flat. Ready to erect with the minimum of base work. I wonder how many flat base, ex quarry, statues were 'walked' and the bases had to be re-carved flat before someone tumbled to that little trick.

Except, of course, it's not a titchy freezer and it's not 4 yards across your nice smooth tiled kitchen floor.

It's a soddin' great 30 ton lump of rock that has taken months to carve, ages to get down the mountain and ages to 'walk' to it's site. Maybe up to 12 kilometers. Across boulder strewn, rubbly, rough ground. THEN, you have to put it on a platform. And if, at any stage, you drop it, it will break and you will have to start again.

I would have plumped for fishing or gathering reed I think. Moai making sounds like it would play merry hell with your hands!




OK, so you have got your moai safely on their platform, and assuming nobody pushes them over for spite, there they are for all eternity or until the salty air erodes them away.

Wrong again.

Think tsunami!

One came in 1960 and blindly conquered, sweeping Tongarikan moai inland for several hundred metres.


This guy landed on his back in such a position as to allow this photo to be taken with his quarry birthplace as background. Now, that is some tsunami.


Happily, in 1992, help was at hand.

In 1992 a team from Japan brought in cranes and other heavy equipment. Their mission: restore Ahu Tongariki. Working under the direction of Chilean archaeologist, Claudio Cristino the task took five years.

So now we can see Ahu Tongariki in all its glory and well impressive it is too.



OK, that's the travelogue, here are the pix, for no other reason than I like them.

Slightly less impressive photo, due to presence of tall portly man with, apparently, no hair.

Pic: Dana Graphics again.

At this juncture, I did have my doubts about using Dana Graphics for pix of me..

After taking several successful photos of me at the quarry, Dana started taking phantom photos, so this shot was eventually taken after much walking about, pointing at camera buttons and giggling.



Eyes Front!













And spot the birdie


















From the back.

This was actually one of the last shots I took at this ahu.

All the rest of the party had settled for less than 500 pictures and made their way to the bus.

Not wishing to get on the wrong side of Andrea (you wouldn't, believe me), I suggested to happy snapping Dana that we might make our way back to the bus.

'Oh, it'll be OK' she said.

'I can walk faster than you so you'll be last and it'll be all your fault'

Bitch!




From the back but a bit nearer.













Tight crop






In All Its Glory. Pretty good platform too.



The Navel of the World


The oldest known traditional name of Rapa Nui is Te Pito o Te Henua. This means ' The Navel of the World'.

Some idea of your own importance I should say. Maybe warranted. When your nearest neighbour is Pitcairn Island, 1000 kilometres away, you ain't going to get much passing trade are you?

So it must have been like the Planet Cricket in ' The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy '. I think it was Planet Cricket. As their planet was permanently cloud covered, they thought they were the only people in anywhere. Not that they knew where 'anywhere' was, cos they thought they were the only ones anywhere, anytime, anyhow. One day a spaceship fell through the cloud and crashed.

What a surprise that was for the Cricketers.

Must have been a bit like that on Rapa Nui at times.

So on to Te Pito Kura.

The navel


The navel is the big round stone in the middle of the rock circle. It is very tactile and slightly magnetic. On a nice hot day it is also comfortingly warm to the touch.

Around it are four smaller navels for you to sit on, warm your bottom and so, if you wish, lay hands on the Big Navel.

Hence the phrase

'Warm hands, warm heart'





Left to right.

Dana, one nice, anonymous Greek lady, the bottom half of the other nice, anonymous Greek lady, Andrea and a Japanese lady, in the pink eyeshade.

All soaking up the warmth from the stones.









Me pointing out the bleedin' obvious to Dana. Who is mugging at the camera instead of paying attention.

This pose was a bit of a poke at the media who make people do daft things like pointing at a whacking great rock for the photo.

Good view of mini-navels here. Bit too low for me to be comfortable though.

OK for Dana. She is only 4 feet 7 inches tall. (Not really)



Don't you think that I have been very restrained with the warm bottom jokes?

Cos this is a family show.

More soon. Sorry about the false alarm e mail. Must have been button happy.

Additions and Errata

1. The photos of Ahu Tongariki at sunset and and the tsunamied moai with the quarry weren't mine. If they are yours, I hope you don't mind me using them. They were too good to leave out.

2 I invented the bit about the Swedish whaler photo. They were Norwegians. With PhotoShop.

RAPA NUI DAY THREE: Part One

Well, hello again, back on the blog after sorting out some (more) photo issues with Blogspot. All seems to be well now.

At the height of my frustration when buried in yards of code instead of pictures, I did think

'This is a hell of a way to enjoy yourself!'

Anyway, Day Three was the BIGGIE.

This is Part One (Oh my Gawd, how many parts to this?)

All day excursion with lunch, finishing with a dip in the Pacific if you had your cozzie. A lot to report so I have split it into three or I may just be blogged out before I finish it.

So, here goes.




First stop was the exotically named 'Bay That Is Good for Cleaning Fish'.

OK, so I forgot the real name because I forgot to take a pic of the label at the gate.

Anyway I have an excuse.

On the way across the field to the first site, an attractive, young, American blonde said to me:

"Hi, I'm Dana"

Well, I thought, not the best chat up line I have ever heard.

But, as it was almost certainly the only one I was likely to get all day (and probably the day after that!), it worked with me and Dana and me spent some of the day together which was great.

Sometimes also separately or together with two Greek ladies whose names I have disgracefully forgotten but who were fun to be around.

Dana will appear later with me and a navel.

(Oh please! Grow up at the back there. I thought that you were past all the body part jokes now, Nephew Matthew. You are 35 for Gods sake))

But back to Cleaning Fish.

It's good for cleaning fish because it has a shoreline that isn't a sheer cliff, hundreds of feet high, it's sheltered and there are no sharks. Well, not many. And they are only small.

Smallish.

And don't snigger. If you have to clean your own fish, these things are important.


There were also moai and pukao all over, all the moai horizontal. This is one of a few.

Apparently if someone annoyed you, another family or tribe for example, and you got mad enough, you pushed their moai down.

( 'You can't talk to me like that! I'll have your moai over if you don't watch your step'.)

Usually associated with a fair bit of argy bargy and no little bloodshed I expect.

Then they burned and pillaged your stuff and pushed your moai down.

Which accounts for all the pushed down moai all over the island.


For a change, this poor bloke never made it to the vertical.

Attempts were made, hence the pile of stones but to no avail.

How do we know it was never erected?

Answer at the end, if I remember to put it in.

And pay attention in future.




Ranu Raraku

Next was, for me, the toppest site of all. All the sites were good but this was the best.

Ranu Raraku is the quarry where the moai were carved. Miles from the coast where they are to be erected of course, no point if it is too easy eh?

OK, you have seen the buried statues and the half carved ones still in the quarry on TV.

Forget it.

When you are slogging up a mountain towards the sticking out heads, in 30 degree heat, to see something that you never dreamed of actually seeing in your lifetime, then it was a hell of a buzz for me


It still gives me a whizz just looking at the photos and writing about it.

The moai were carved out of rock called volcanic tuff. Except that it ain't so tuff and can be carved with a tool made from harder stone. As tuff is not so hard, erosion is a big problem and some of the moai are well worn away.

Erosion is also the reason there are only heads sticking up. The hill is essentially making its' way to the sea and burying moai as it goes.

I make no apology for all the photos. It is such a stunning site and sight; I still can't quite believe that I have been there.

So settle down and enjoy.


This guy probably came off best. Left to rest in peace for eternity.

He is huge. It's a pity there is no scale. As a guide though, I would maybe come up to the tip of his nose!




These guys made it out of the quarry.

They will look out to sea for ever or until erosion catches up with them.















Lonely Moai?

Moai looking out over the Shropshire Hills?


























Leaning moai with Andrea (our guide) for scale.

Lovely she was but no small cookie.
Leaning moai with me for scale.

Good job my head wasn't any higher else my hair would have disappeared!

(Photo by Dana Graphic)


Moai in repose















After the moai extravaganza, Andrea said 'This way' and headed off up (and I mean up) a path previously only used by goats and people with oxygen and crampons.

I knew this was going to be a serious day as Andrea turned up in trainers. Usually she wore flip flops!

After much scrambling and mild panic on my part about having, sooner or later, to go down again, we reached the usual water filled volcanic crater.

This one was for fun though.

Once a year, the young bucks put on paint and paddle across the lake on reed boats.

They then pick up bunches of bananas on poles and, possibly still carrying the reed boats, run round the crater and up the hill.


Then they pick up big bunches of more reed (and the reed boats and bunches of bananas?) to carry down to the lake before a final swim across. With or without their multiple bunches of reeds and bananas was not made clear.

By way of a change from swimming and running about, with or without reed boats, bunches of bananas on sticks and more reeds, the young bucks could take part in a 'Haka Pei"

This means you get to slide down steep grassy hills on banana leaf sleds at high speed. All going 'Wheeeeeeeee' probably.

Bit like Carding Mill Valley in Shropshire only there you use plastic fertiliser sacks instead of banana leaves.

And not many people get painted up.


And so to lunch. With my new good buddy, Dana.

Due to her idiosyncratic approach to travel and Easter Island trips in particular, Dana had managed to get herself on a 'lunch included' tour with a 'packed lunch'.

Of course, not having the 'included' lunch, she was banished to the outlying 'packed lunch, too mean to pay for the included lunch' table, on her own, with ants for company.

Well, of course, I did the chivalrous thing.

Reckoning that I would be better company than ants (it was close), I had my paid for, 'included lunch', with her and her, 'economy class, packed' lunch at her outlying, ant-ridden, table.

OK, just my little joke.

Dana is an elegant, attractive, blonde, engaging, friendly and intelligent lady from Colorado, currently working in TV in NYC. Good company she is. Lunch was a treat for me, except for the ants, which weren't actually very good company.

Thanks for that Dana.

Danas' Mom had a milestone birthday last week and Dana had a week in Colorado on vacation.

Hope the birthday party was a gas and hope you have many more Danas' Mom.

I suppose you just couldn't make Saturday night.

Request for Noushka. Can you produce before the Wembley Final or well after it? It's only a baby after all. You can have babies anytime, this might be Morecambes only chance at promotion. Think of Uncle Matthew rather than self, self, self. Aim for before the 20th or after it. Good luck and luv whenever.

More soon. With Danas' navel.

Brace Yourselves!

And, by the way, blog writing is a hell of a way to enjoy yourself. This brings lots of things, otherwise forgotten, back to me. And some people seem closer than they might other wise be.

OK it's sentimental old me.

Blame the bottle of Chablis!

Luv To All

BJIC