a letter from amy

Amy recently celebrated her birthday. I last saw her during my birthday party last August. At that time she said that shortly she was shortly leaving for a round the world trip and most likely we will not see her here in bangkok for her birthday. I sent her an email to greet her on her birthday and got a nice response with some great pictures of Easter Island. I am printing her email for our other friends as who I am sure will be interested in Amy's travels. Happy Birthday Amy!!

hi chito,

thank you for remembering....

we were at easter island on my birthday. i wasn't sure when to celebrate it because it was the 11th here and 12th dec in manila, there's now a 13 hour time difference to manila from where we are. so i told henrik it was my birthday on both days :-)

being in easter island was quite an experience. its one of the world's most remote inhabited islands, its halfway between tahiti and mainland south america, over 4,000 kms away from both the east and west! seeing the moai (huge stone statues) all over the island was fascinating. up to now, it remains a mystery why the statues were made, how they were moved from where they were built (most statues weigh over 100 tons, the largest is 180 tons!), why the natives stopped making them and why they all fell down from the places where they were erected. there are many theories, but that's what they are, just best guesses. there was even a theory that the statues were brought by aliens from outer space :-) there are about 800 moai found
in various stages of completion all over the island.

rapa nui is the local name of easter island, it was named easter island by a dutch explorer who found the island on easter day. the natives believe that the moais are representations of deceased people/ ancestors that's why they have no legs (except one statue found which was in a kneeling position, believed to be a priest).
each moai looks different, some have big noses and some small, some have big foreheads some have them narrow, some have fat bellies others are lean, etc. only the king, village chief and people in authority were allowed to have a moai made. through DNA testing the rapa nui people are believed to have come from tahiti, not south america.

we went to the mountain where the moais were 'manufactured'. the statues were in different stages of completion, they were all carved out of the mountain using a hard stone (some statues are still attached to the mountain) then transported to ceremonial platforms - how they did this is still a mystery! all completed statues have been toppled down (no one knows why) and the ones standing have been put up over the recent years. the 15 moais standing in a row near the coast and facing directly the mountain from which they were carved was reconstructed/ erected by the japanese government in return for getting a statue to japan and having it tested. the statue has since been returned to the island and is a few hundred meters from he 15 moais.

these 15 moais were originally toppled down, then an earthquake in chile caused a tsunami at easter island and washed away the staues farther inland that's why they were re-constructed, our guide told us.

so interesting... there's even the story of the bird man competition where every year, the strongest among the different tribes compete to have the right to control the distribution of the island's food and resources. the competitors have to run down the steep mountain, go over the jagged rocks, swim across the shark infested waters to motu nui island and get the season's first egg laid by a sooty tern bird.
the first swimmer to return with an unbroken egg is proclaimed birdman of the year.

and its still a mystery why most of the island has no trees, wild grass just grows on most of the rolling hills. some say the rats brought by the europeans caused it, some say the natives cut down the trees until they were no more, they used the trees to transport the huge moai, its still anyone's guess....

enough of these stories now, time to see the pictures!
hope you enjoy them as we did.

cheers,
amy