Dreams Come True
Easter Island
04 CHAPTER
THE POWER
OF THOUGHT
On Easter Island, we rented a room in a house owned by a very charming woman named Maria. During our stay, she became like a family to us. Maria has a small business, plus – many exciting ideas that she wants to bring to life. She rents out her house to tourists. Besides being busy with her business, she also works full time for the only airline on the island. Maria even managed to visit Paris once. This woman, in her mid-fifties, has so much energy and drive, I couldn’t stop but wonder how she does it all!
We’ve been talking a lot. In her broken English, Maria shared her life experience with us and even managed to give some advice. The most memorable part of all was her daily breakfast preparations, especially the freshly squeezed juices. Every morning they were made from different fruits and vegetables. Once she made us a fresh juice from a cactus. When we asked what it was made of, she offered to taste the plant itself.
Every day we would find some edible tree fruits on the island and like children collected everything we saw and brought back with us to show Maria. Once, we discovered a strange fruit growing on a tree and decided to bring it to our lady friend for the examination. This fruit turned out to be an avocado. We had no idea it grew on trees!
When we asked Maria: who brought the Moai statues to the island? She answered very sincerely: “They walked by themselves.” “By themselves, how so?” We replied. “The power of thought,” she explained. We couldn’t get more information out of her, but from the conversation, we realized that this knowledge was passing on from generation to generation, so the indigenous people of Rapa Nui strongly believed in this explanation.
Maria also told us that a UFO had been spotted near the Rano Kao volcano a couple of times. She became a witness to a fantastic story that happened to one of her friends. One day, Maria’s friend climbed up to the top of Rano Kao Volcano and began to photograph incredible views that open up from the top. When later, this man looked at the photographs that he has been taking, in all the pictures, there was a presence of something reminiscent of a spacecraft. It was quite a shock to him. He preserved all the photographs from that day, and Maria saw them.
It was fascinating to hear the stories and legends from a local. I especially remembered the story about the pale-faced girls, tormented in caves for weeks. These chosen young virgins were hiding in deep caves in ancient times to whiten their skin for certain religious holidays. The girls were sitting in captivity for a long time and did not see the light of day and other people. I cannot even imagine what was happening in their heads during such moments of isolation.
When twilight descends on the island, everything around appears to be different. One late evening, we were returning to the village of Tangaroa, and suddenly, I felt some movement under my feet. It was quite dark, and the road was almost invisible, but then I heard some crunching and realized that I had stepped on something rather bulky. After I reached for a flashlight, I saw a not very pleasant picture. An army of giant, fat cockroaches, the size of an index finger, were crawling under my feet. They were swarming down there, running directly towards me. I was able to shift my feet so that no collisions would occur randomly! Apparently, on this island, the army of cockroaches crawls up from the underground only when it gets dark. At first, my hair was moving from horror when I saw how many of those were creeping along the roads, but then I got used to it and even stopped paying attention to the smashing crunching sounds each time I stepped on one of them.
Another observation that did not leave me indifferent was the peaceful coexistence of cats and chickens in Maria’s backyard. She has quite a lovely garden, in front of her house, where many cats like to sunbathe. She feeds and takes care of them. At the same time, chickens are walking there daily, with a whole brood of baby chicks — neither one nor the other side, minds such a cohabitation. Cats do not hunt chickens, and chickens are not at all afraid of cats.
Despite having this mini farm near the house, Maria's husband wants to buy a large farm, somewhere outside the village and move there. Our heroine stubbornly resists this because she enjoys socializing and likes to be in the epicenter of things (her exact words).
For sure, Easter Island is an unusual place! But without Moai - the island would not be so mysterious and exciting. And yet how surprising it is that far from the hectic life of our world, in the center of the Pacific Ocean, such long-eared and long-nosed giant creatures were born, endowed with sacred power. They turned their backs to the ocean and faced the place for which they have been responsible for centuries. This stone army could’ve grown double the size, but all of a sudden, for unknown to us reasons, the production of idols has stopped. It seems as if the mysterious sculptors abandoned all they had and escaped the island. Although the secret remains unraveled, and its keepers will be silent forever.
