Dreams Come True
Easter Island
01 CHAPTER
RAPA
NUI
Easter Island is the most remote and isolated place on Earth. Nobody knows its real name. The locals call it Rapanui. In the oldest legends, the island always stands under the name Te Pito o Te Henua, or the Navel of the World.
Mysterious Island
Easter Island belongs to Chile. Only once a year a cargo ship brings goods and supplies for the Islanders and then it returns back to Chile. Also, every day at noon, a plane lands with a new batch of tourists. The island has no other connections with the outside world. The locals have practically nothing of their own. Everything is brought here from the continent. The locals are terribly lazy, and it never even occurs to anyone to start producing something. There is no trade, no activity, no business, and only relaxed cows, peacefully grazing on the fields.
However, this most secluded, sun-dried island in the world, keeps the greatest mystery of all humanity. The incredible engineers worked hard on producing something very unique. In those old times, people didn’t build castles nor palaces but carved human figures out of the stone of unimaginable proportions, and not just carved, but also dragged them through the mountains and valleys and set on stone pedestals in all ends of the island.
The first time you see Moai – the stone statues, which are scattered around the perimeter of the island, you are amazed by the rare talent of those people who lived on that deserted island, long before our time. They believed in the afterlife, and Moai served as memorials to the deceased islanders who came from the sacred royal family. There are around nine hundred huge statues on the island, and this is very impressive, since the average weight of such a giant is 10 tons, and the average height is around 10 - 12 meters. It still remains a mystery as to how these stone giants were moved around the island and then placed on top of the pedestals, specially reserved for them. The island is literally saturated with mystery, and the age-old unsolved secret is taking more and more of my thoughts every day.
On the island, besides the eternal Moai statues that attract tourists from all over the world, you can observe the most stunning landscapes and dizzying abysses. Its soaring volcanic cliffs that are mostly eaten by massive waves offer views of the Pacific Ocean's infinite blues. While sneaking closer to the edge of a cliff, I realized that the whole world, with its endless flow of information, has remained somewhere very far away, and the distance to the nearest continent is almost the same as to the moon.
We became an exception when we decided to walk around the island on foot. Basically, here everyone travels by car or in rare cases – by bicycle because by foot you would have to walk enormous distances to most of the Moai, which are randomly scattered around the island. And since there are almost no trees on the island, walking under that merciless baking sun merely becomes unbearable. Anywhere you look, the wild horses are playfully running free, or well-fed cows chewing on semi-dried grass in unison. A few infrequently passing by cars had to slow down to witness a couple of crazies strolling in a burning sun along the dusty road.