Let Sleeping Moai Lie

Our objectives were straightforward enough; the key moai platforms at Tongariki and Ahu Akivi, the famous quarry at Rano Raraku, the ceremonial village of Orongo and anything that took our fancy along the way. Here my irrepressible, native curiosity rebounded in all its youthful vigour. Apparently some eight hundred moai lie scattered around the almost treeless island in various states of uprightness and downrightness. We must have visited nearly half of them, at times meandering along barely discernable tracks, sometimes nearly running over their petrified corpses hidden in the long grass as we exhausted the extent of the scant road network.

It's hard to imagine that Easter Island was possibly once the world's largest bird colony, replete with terns, albatross and petrels in apparently boundless plenty. The landscape, now merely lush pastures dotted with imported eucalypts ripe for sheep and livestock, was once an impenetrable palm jungle, all laid waste for the glory and gratification of the stony ancestor gods who later stood silently by while their world crumbled into mayhem. Their mute complicity however did not go unpunished and the emaciated, battle-weary villagers turned on their uncaring idols, beheading them, toppling them and thrusting their uncaring faces into the mud.