“Tokirau!”
Well, we don’t want anybody feeling left out, do we? And besides this, our new canine companion from the Miru Hostel has really grown on us and it’s like he’s always been our third musketeer.
We walked towards the upper edge of Hanga Roa where houses and people became few and far as we made our way onto the off-road path towards the magnificent crater lake of Rano Kau and the ancient ceremonial village of Orongo. Tokirau, not deliberately, was always sure to keep us on the ball every so often by attracting other territorial Lupus-like beasts who charged in our direction, snarling. To be honest our quadrapedal amigo isn’t the fighting type and would, more often than not, retreat, hiding behind us for safety. We can assure you that standing between groups of vicious, protective dogs is not at all fun, but we remained remarkably unscathed.
The crater of Rano Kau was beyond our imagination and was not at all disappointing. In fact, it was breathtaking and so large that it seemed to be swallowing a huge chunk of Easter Island. Its dusty, sooty grey interior had collapsed into the well-preserved crater lake itself, which enclosed floating islands of various vegetation and colourful flora. Stopping at the top of this large hill for lunch of bread rolls and pate was doubtlessly the right decision before continuing to Orongo.
The sixteenth century village of Orongo appeared as small, flattened rocks, now with a light dusting of yellow lichens, that had been carefully stacked without any binding material to form wide, but shallow, fortresses looking out to the Pacific Ocean and Motu Nui, the uninhabited island located about one or two hundred metres offshore where the migratory seabirds, namely the Sooty Turns, arrive to lay their eggs. We were fortunate enough to see amazing petroglyphs, symbolic to Make-Make; the Rapa Nui god that revolves around a trinity of the Spring season, fertility rites and migratory seabirds. When one looks closely at these rock carvings, it’s just about possible to make out the Bird Man himself.
Talking of birds, we saw another large bird approaching the island from Santiago who had a tricky job landing in the strong crosswinds.
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