Easter Island/Rapa Nui

A short distance east of the center of town, just inland from the Tahai complex, is the privately-owned Padre Sebastian Englert Museum. It is small, but extremely informative, with many display cases, statuary, and illustrated panels. It's all in Spanish, but we were able to borrow an English guidebook that came in very hand for words I didn't know.

One of the main features was a case that held the only nearly intact eye of a Moai ever found. It was brought to light during excavations at the Anakena beach site. The eye itself is made of coral (coral exists underwater around the island, even though no reefs have formed) and the pupil is, in this case, made of red scoria. Until this was found some researchers didn't believe that the Moai really had inset eyes like all the legends said. I suspect these "researchers" had never come to Rapa Nui, because I found broken bits of coral and obsidian around most of the Ahu we visited, and not around any other areas even twenty meters away.

Another special feature at this museum was a statue of a female Moai (the breasts were a giveaway, and the shape of the head was different). These are very rare; I think only four have been found. Some legends I read did say that there were very powerful queens from time to time, just like in Hawaii.

Right outside one of the museum windows was the Moai that Thor Hyerdahl and his crew moved. It's pretty small (about 3-4 meters high) compared to many of the others that were transported and mounted on platforms by the Rapanui people in former times.

In Santiago, Chile, the Natural History Museum is supposed to have a good collection of Rapanui artifacts, but it was closed during our visit and the PreColumbian Museum didn't have anything from Rapanui. Fortunately, we did find a private museum in the coastal resort town of Viña del Mar called "Museo Fonck" which had three rooms devoted to Rapanui. There we found lots of obsidian spear points and other weapons, finely-carved power sticks and paddles, magical stones, a wooden chest plate called reimiro ("wooden lei") that is the symbol of modern Rapanui, fishhooks and tools, and a large tapa cape. The attractive guide who showed us around thought the topknot on the Moai was a crown, but otherwise she was very informative.

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