More Rapa Nui

Continuing my Rapa Nui stories… one of the sites we happened upon in our drive around the island, Ahu Te Pito Kura, was a giant toppled moai against the gorgeous blue of the coastal water.

The people there give it scale. This was the largest moai to have ever been erected - at 33 ft! It was also one of the few to have a topknot -

This was our view as we drove around that first day, with gorgeous blue skies and essentially no one else around -

Tongariki was up next. This is the largest ahu (platform) on the island and has 15 moai -

They had all been toppled during the island’s civil wars, and the platform was actually moved inland by a huge tsunami in 1960 from the 9.5 earthquake that arose near the Chilean coast. The ahu and its maoi were restored in the 1990’s.

I liked this next view because you can appreciate the cliffs on the north end of the island, belonging to the extinct volcano - Poike:

Nearby is the “quarry”, Rano Raraku, where nearly half of the ~1,000 moai on the island still reside.

I’m so glad I have a long lens, because we weren’t allowed to go into this site without a guide…

…but I stood at the edge of the parking lot…

… and got some neat shots. I’m also super glad that I was able to get these that day, as the day we went with the guide, it was grey and rainy.

The next picture shows how the moai were carved out of the rock, and in the top part of the picture note the moai looking into the sky is still attached to the rock -

I was mesmerized by the blue water surrounding the island, as well as the crashing waves -

We never got into this site, even with the guide, but I loved the contrast of all the deep colors -

Now, I’ll go onto some special lighting situations that we sought out. Sunset at Tahai was supposed to be the equivalent of going to the cinema for the islanders. (ok, corny, but the idea was cute)

We got up early one morning to drive to the north end of the island (about 30 minutes from our cabana) to try and catch sunrise at Tongariki. Even at 0630, they had a guard posted so that we couldn’t enter the site without a guide. So we went back to the stone wall along the road where I had gotten my initial pictures -

I actually thought the colors on the clouds behind us were prettier!