Today (This blog was written on August 10), Daddy, Pete, Porter and I went ashore to check out the Moai. We were anchored in Hotu Iti, where a famous row of Moai stand. A bit away, another set of Moai rest. The two kinds are different.
We took the dinghy ashore and walked to the Moai. They are huge. They are from two to eight meters tall. They stand on a stone platform, called an ahu. Their arms go along their sides and meet together under their large bellies. They are tall and have linear heads. I thought they were astounding.
After admiring them, we walked to the nursery. The nursery is the place that the Rapa Nui (the inhabitants of Isla de Pascua) used as a quarry. This means they carved the Moai out of the side of the cliffs found there. The Moai are in various different places around the nursery, which is about the size of three football fields. In the meadow, at the bottom of the cliff, most of the Moai are toppled over and are lying on their faces or sides.
Just above the meadow, there is a green slope with tall Moai heads. These ones are just heads. They are sitting up to their shoulders in the ground, but the heads alone are as tall as the toppled ones in the meadow would be if they were standing up. The rest of their bodies are buried in the ground.
At the cliff, you can see where they carved out chunks of rock to become Moai. Taking a closer look, we noticed that there are some Moai still in the cliff, half-carved, and left incomplete. `
The most amazing one still in the cliff band was lying on its back showing its whole body, which is huge.
The Moai on the slope look different from the ones down on the shore near where we are anchored. The ones on the slope are taller with clearly long ears and a distinct nose that takes up most of the face, whereas the ones on the shore are fatter, have undefined ears, and smaller noses. Both sets have lips that are slightly pursed, so it looks like the Moai are thinking. I was able to get closer to the ones on the slope, so I noticed that their eyes are not defined at all, although their brows are.
The Moai were awe-inspiring. Before coming here, I had seen pictures of the Moai and I thought they looked like cool, stone statutes. Now that I have seen them in person, I appreciate the fact that it took generations to build these huge (I imagined them much smaller) ancestral monuments. As Daddy likes to say, "No adventure is complete without big stone monoliths!" We can check that off our list. Now it is on to more penguins and hopefully polar bears next summer. - Jack Rabbit
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