Today I rented a quad bike and toured the island and saw all the sites and then watched the opening ceremony for the festival. This is phase two of my trip, wherein I am travelling alone, and I declare the first full day a resounding success.
Last night was hot and unsettled and punctuated by unwelcome dreams, and then at some point in the early hours the heat broke and the rain moved in. I dropped into sleep that was deep and dreamless. My plans of getting up early took rather a hit when I looked at my watch and found it was half ten. I was up and dressed and out in a few minutes, and had a late breakfast or early lunch at the far end of town, where I figured things would be cheaper. They were, but still not cheap.
During breakfast it rained again, and I saw why the drains are so big. It’s not the total volume that’s the problem, it’s the peak load. In the height of the falling water the drains flowed deep and swift, and then not long after that all the water had been carried away and in fact the sun was back.  I had to swing by the hostel again to get my passport, which I had forgotten, and when I finally reached the rental place after a 20-minute walk, sweat was running freely down my cranium, dripping off my nose and damp on my back and neck. I had brought the travel towel with me and used that to wipe away the worst of it, but I still felt like I was stuck in an invisible steam room.
In the rental place they cast a cursory glance over my I-can-drive sheet of paper and told me to choose my weapon. I asked for a quad bike. They made me sign a few forms, and then took me outside to the machine. All this took less than five minutes.
The quad is bigger than I was expecting, with chunky tires and a metal frame for luggage on the back and front. They talked me through how to use it rather quickly, then the lady hopped off and indicated that I should get on and start it. I couldn’t quite recall how to do that, but I managed it with some trial and error. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Enjoy the day!’ And she was gone.
Err, I thought to myself. I tried to edge my way forward and managed to stall it. I was trying to figure out how to re-start it when a lady who must have been well into her 60s came over and started it for me. I said a grateful thanks, and she continued on her way with an expression either amused or annoyed. An American man then stopped (I am not making any of this up) and asked if I was sure I could handle it. I looked at him and said there was only one way to know for sure, and I eased my way gently out into the traffic.
Once I was on the move I was fine. The front brakes are operated by the fingers of your right hand, and the accelerator is underneath the right grip, operated by your thumb. The back brake is at your right foot. The fingers on your left hand are for changing into reverse and engaging the parking brake.  The gears are semi-automatic, so you push the up or down button on the left handle-bar as required. There is some additional security around getting into reverse, and once the key is in the ignition the machine is started by a button rather than the key itself. And that’s essentially it. There are no indicators or fuel gauge or mirrors or any of that nonsense, but there is a number plate on the back so I assume it’s road legal. The machine I drove was a Honda, and there were warnings written all over it about not operating on public roads.
There is long loop around the eastern part of the island and at roughly 45km round-trip it’s a bit too long for casual mountain biking but perfect for quads and motorbikes. They had given me a map when I rented the quad and I found the right road without too many issues, and once I was moving the air was cold and refreshing and for the first time since I got here I didn’t feel in any way hot. After some experimentation I found that 30km was the ideal cruising speed – fast enough to keep that cool wind blowing but slow enough that I could see everything and feel like I was part of the world I was passing through.
There was a wonderful sensation of freedom on the quad, completely different from driving around in a car. A few kilometres out of town I saw spray rising from waves hitting the shore and there was a narrow, stony track heading that way, so I turned off the main road and made for it. I crawled through in first gear over rocks and sand, and then the trail came out at a viewing spot perfect for seeing the waves. The coast was of dark volcanic rock and the waves slammed into it and sent spray high in the air. Leading from that place was another track, and I followed that one to another cove where the waves were even more spectacular. All of a sudden the idea of small motorised things made sense to me in a way it never had before.
I eventually got back on the main road, and as I drove along I reflected on the fact that if you leave the only town on a small island with just half a bottle of water, it is not in any way evident how to get more water.
Then I came on a large rock at the side of the road, about the size of two cars end to end, surrounded by a circle of smaller stones, shaped a bit like a wedge. I stopped to have a look. I thought at first it was a petrified tree of epic proportions, and then finally the penny dropped that it was one of the maui, the famous statues that everyone associates with Easter Island. This one had fallen at some point in the past and was lying on its face. You’re not supposed to touch it but I did, briefly, just to get the picture of my hand on the rock. I should really stop doing that, but it introduces a tactile element to the medium in a way I find very compelling.
I had known there were wild horses on Easter Island before I came here, but I had thought I might see them from a hilltop in the distance. I hadn’t known that there are hundreds of them, and they are everywhere. As I tipped along in the quad (‘Riding along in my ATV / Giant old heads and little old me’) I passed by dozens of them grazing on the side of the road, sometimes looking up at the sound of the engine, sometimes oblivious. They’re beautiful animals, even more so in groups of adults and foals. There’s something natural and timeless about the sight.
The route took me past all the main sites on that side of the island. Two of them, close to each other, are the main tourist attractions because there are lots of statues close together. The first is called Rano Raraku. On the way in to see it I was relieved of 30,000 pesos, USD60, for a five-day pass to all the national parks. On the bright side, I did find a man selling bottles of water for three dollars a pop.
The entrance path winds along the base of the volcano. Ahead of me and to either side were dozens of the statues. Some of them are bald and some of them have hair, some look almost mournful and others less serious. All of them have very long noses and an elongated face relative to the forehead. I wonder did the people who created them believe something elemental was centred behind and just beneath the eyes? How nice it would be to be able to go back and ask them.
Some of the stone used to create the statues was quarried at that place, and one of the statues is half-finished where the stone was originally cut, lying on its back and staring up at the roof of a cave in the rock. It seems as though the original creators might come back at any moment to finish the job. What struck me most about each statue was that they radiate dignity, a peaceful watchfulness. It’s calming to sit and stare at them, and yet again I wished that I could draw.
That site was rather full of tourists because a large cruise ship pulled up this morning and for most of the day sat out in the bay like some sort of malevolent sea-beast, disgorging tourists of the older and generally American variety. There were also lots of Germans around. Over  lunch I got talking to the people at the next table, and they were from the boat. They had four hours in total on the island and had been trying to rent a car, but everyone wanted to charge them for a full day and they didn’t want to pay that. The idea of a cruise suddenly lost quite a bit of its appeal; since our adventures in the Galapagos I have been thinking it’s something I would like to do again, but now I’m swinging around once more to being as independent as possible.
Not far from the volcano, on the coast at Tongariki, there is a row of the statues on a ceremonial base. One of them wears a hat of sorts, crafted from a different rock. Why were they all put in a line? They all resolutely ignore the sea and stare inland, across the hot, flat space to the volcano in the near distance, and they keep their secrets well.
Later on I saw carvings etched into rocks on the ground in ‘pre-historic’ times; no more specific date was suggested. Many of them are hard to see, but they provide little benches like one-sided picnic-tables that you can stand up on to look down and get a better view. I guess this is how you do cave painting where there aren’t any caves. One of them is supposed to be a canoe – it’s two parallel curving lines (can lines be both parallel and curving, or is that a different word? I must ask Dad) about a metre apart, and I think it’s something of a stretch to make a canoe out of it. What it most reminded me of was the track that would be left by a vehicle like my own conveyance, should such a thing be fossilised, and that tripped ideas for a few possible hundred-million dollar action movies in my mind.
I was getting hungry and the day was getting on, but on impulse I turned off the road down the track for a beach called Ovahe, and how glad I was that I did. A curved chunk is missing from a conical hill, as though someone just removed it with a giant cylinder, and the waves flow in to two white beaches divided by house-size chunks of black and brown volcanic stone. Some of the stone looked to be the same as the hat on the statue in Rano Raraku, to my inexpert eye. I went up on the hill overlooking the beach first and took some pictures, then I went down to the beach proper to find there were two ladies in the lee of a rock sunbathing. Both they and I were surprised to see each other, but there were smiles all around. I walked around in the edge of the waves for a while and then made my egress, wondering as I did why the volcanic islands of the Galapagos turned into such a profusion of life while things here remained so much more muted.
The one final big site to see was Anakena, where a row of statues sit and stare. There’s a nice beach nearby and lots of the locals were there, swimming and sunbathing. The tourists milled about and took picture after picture of the statues. The statues themselves formed a neat dividing line between the two groups.
There was a straight road back from where I was to the town, cutting through the centre of the island and paved all the way, and in the interests of science I picked a suitable spot where I had a good view ahead and found out how fast the ATV would go. If you open the throttle it accelerates hard and loudly, and I topped out at 70km per hour. As that speed the wind is howling and grasping and the road needs to be level and straight.
I cruised back to the hostel and got a book, then drove myself back into town and got dinner. The book was for the wait that I have come to understand is inevitable with every meal. I was in and out in an hour all told. I ordered something I thought was a burger which turned out to be a burger without the bun, served on a plate of chips. Rather randomly there was a fried egg on one side and a hot-dog sausage on the other. I ate the whole lot and swatted my hat at the flies from time to time and read the biography of Benjamin Franklin I got in Quito. I am now, somewhat worryingly, on the third of the four books I bought there. I assume there will be lots of English-languages places to get books in Santiago, but even if I could find such exotic items here on Easter Island they would probably cost as much as a decent second-hand Mercedes. I am taking notes on Franklin to slow myself down.
Drove back here and had a shower, then started these notes, then went out to see the festival kick-off. It was in a large open space by the coast at the other end of the town, and by the time I got there, ten minutes after it was supposed to start, probably only a fifth of the final audience was actually in place and clearly nothing was anywhere near beginning. There was a large stage set up (with a giant chicken as part of the set) and rows of plastic chairs lined up on front of it. Behind the chairs was a solid wooden fence, and I stood up against this, which turned out to provide an excellent and unobstructed view and give me something to rest my elbows on to take videos with the compact Canon.
The first thing the happened was that a flat-bed 4X4 came slowly down the street with people in the back playing drums and singing. Everyone turned to watch. In pride of place over the drummers was a scantily-clad young lady. She waved to the crowd and smiled, and cameras flashed constantly. The truck came to a halt.
Then the big screens around the stage came on and music played, and everyone watched some pictures of the activities of festivals gone by, and then attention shifted back to the woman on the truck again. I had kind of forgotten she was there. Now and again something random would go wrong – at various points the sound cut out, the big screens showed a projection of iTunes, the microphones clearly picked up the sound of a child crying and someone saying ‘Sshhhhhh’, and quite a few people seemed to forget their lines. But no-one minded.
Attention shifted back to the stage as a strapping chap came on dressed in not much bar elaborate paint and a headdress, dancing around in an elegant and light-footed way, carrying a burning torch. He was joined by other men with torches with large smoky flames. There was a much shouting into the microphone in what must have been the local language to Easter Island. The rhythm is short and staccato, reminding me very much of the guide that we had for Machu Picchu who spoke Quechua. When he was doing his giving-thanks-for-the-coca-leaves routine, he sounded very similar.
As the night wore on more people came on stage, and most of them had a few words to say to the crowd, almost none of which I could follow. There were various dance scenes. A queen came on, wearing a crown. She had a beauty-queen smile of textbook perfection. Then she sang, and she might actually have been good if her voice was not magnified to a point where it probably shook seismometers on the mainland. The scantily clad lady from the truck turned up, still wearing very little. At least that showed she was definitely involved in the ceremonies – I was starting to think maybe she was some sort of pre-show entertainment.
I was getting a smidgen less interested, and then the queen started to sing again, and I chose that moment to slide away into the crowd. There were all sorts of stands set up selling food and drink behind the main body of the crowd and so I had a look around those. Immediately behind the crowd there were tables of mostly men having a few beers. In the darkness behind the tables, near the water’s edge, there were teenagers sitting around under the trees, and here and there I could see the light of what we might generously call a cigarette. So everyone was where they wanted to be.
The walk home was rather dark but I had my torch. Yesterday the woman who runs the show here in the hostel saw me playing with the smaller dog. The bigger one was tied up at that moment, and she told me to keep away from him in a rather stern voice. But when I got back here this evening both of them were loose, and both of them had great welcome for me. Since then I have finished these notes, which took longer than expected and it’s now almost 1am. The sounds of the festival are carrying clearly to me from the other end of town, and in the last few moments ‘I’m yours’ from whoever sings that has just finished. Clearly they queen eventually got pushed off the mike.
I don’t have much of a plan for tomorrow yet. I want to see the other side of the island but that means going through the nature park, which in turn means proceeding under either my own or equine steam and being very exposed to the sun and the heat. I will get up early and decide then. I have to leave back the quad before 12, and if there was anywhere else to go on it I would rent it for another day. Riding it really created a sense of freedom and possibility, and I would love to do it some more. For now though, Morpheus is calling. Goodnight out there.
