Hiking the west coast of Easter Island

Home > Diaries > 2019 > 822

WELL GOOD morning. I've been photographing the sunset Moai this morning with the sun coming from the other direction. That's very interesting. I've just finished that and now I'm visiting the local museum here. Obviously, I've learnt a lot since I've been here but museums always contain a lot more information and artefacts and stuff that you wouldn't see out on the field so I'm going there this morning on my final full day on the island. I'm going to do some exploring in there and hopefully find out a bit more.

Okay I've left the museum now. There's an amazing amount of information in there. While I was there, I actually realised that I've now been to all three corners of Polynesia. This marks one corner of the Polynesian triangle. New Zealand where I'm from, marks the other lower corner, and the third corner is in Hawaii where I went last year, so I've now been to all three corners of Polynesia. I now need to do a few trips in the middle and explore some of the islands. Anyway, I'm now heading north along the coast in this fairly remote area. There are not the huge crowds - just a couple of people over there, a guide and a couple over there - but otherwise this is a pretty quiet place. You can see Hangaroa still behind me here. We're just past the town limit now. It looks quite flat, but that's the big volcano I climbed yesterday with the crater going down the middle of it. So just heading north on my final full day on Easter Island. I've managed to explore nearly all of the island. This is the one coast I haven't explored yet. So on with it.

Well I'm hiking along this walking track up to a couple of little caves on this rather remote area of the island. Being away from all the tour buses and everything gives more of an appreciation of the remoteness and bigness of this area, not to mention its isolation. We're thousands of kilometres from anywhere - just ocean. Behind me, there's a tree in the way, is the volcano I climbed yesterday. If I turn around to look in front, this is the highest mountain on the island. It is about 530 metres above sea level. The island itself sits in a couple of kilometres of water. It's quite a big volcano but obviously not as big as the ones up in Hawaii. There's a horse head. But in many ways, this reminds me of the main island of Hawaii. It's fairly recent. It now looks like we're starting to descend towards the first of the caves.

Well I've reached the coast here and it is very rugged around here. There are some small caves here, they are very tiny so you have to crawl into them but we can't get into them. They were used by the people (that's a big wave) during times of war because it wasn't always peaceful around here. They used to hide in these little caves and there's a few of them along this coast line.

Well this is the entrance to one of the caves. This is the only one I can see. It is hardly even big enough to fit inside. Apparently, it is about fifty metres long, it is a lava tube. People used to hide in here during the tribal wars. When the population got big here there used to be a lot of competition for land, and quite a few wars broke out. This was one of the tunnels where a lot of people hid when the fighting was going on.