I’m On Top of the World

On Tuesday we headed up to the highest point on Rapa Nui—Easter Island. It was maybe a 4 mile hike up the side of an old volcano.

I figure I was the highest person with his feet on the ground in 2,200 miles.

The highest point on Easter Island is Maunga (Mount) Terevaka. However, it’s old and eroded away a lot, so it’s actually fairly flat-looking once you are up there. It’s not as “volcano” looking as Orongated Rano Kau was near Orongo.

Almost all of the trees disappeared off Easter Island in the 1800s. The original theories guessed that the Rapanui had cut them all down to transport the moai, but it is considered more likely that many of them were slashed and burned in order to open up land for farming. There is also a suggestion that the rats that arrived on the island (either with the Rapanui or brought by Europeans—more likely—ate a fair number of the palm nuts and disrupted reproduction.

Most of Easter Island these days is covered in grass, and that was what we mainly walked on. It was rather coarse grass.

Herding Our Way Up

Of course there are horses; there’s grass, isn’t there? Directly behind the horses you can see a cup-shaped ridge in the distance. That is Rano Raraku, which is where the quarry is located from which the moai came. Just behind it, and a little to the left, is where Tongariki is located (but it is out of view).

As we continued up, a line of horses crossed our path.

Passing Horses

These horses are owned, but they are also fairly wild. We know they’re owned because they are branded. But they spend all of there time up there in their herds, without any sort of barn in sight. But it really never gets cold enough to need a barn, and there’s plenty to eat. So they are pretty wild.

In this shot Alan caught the tail end of the line as I was finishing up watching them for my picture above.

Continuing Along

Because it is rather flat on top there are really 3 named peaks. Here you can see Lucas on the trail as we approach Maunga Kuma.

Approaching Maunga Kuma

This is the “sharpest” of the peaks and is a bit of an effort to climb to the top of. Lucas and I went up there. The main path we were on was mainly a volcanic soil or grass, but the Maunga was made of all sorts of chunks of tuff, volcanic ash that has turned to rock. It really wasn’t too bad to walk on (good traction). You really had to watch your feet, though, because they were scattered in such a way that it would be easy to get one’s foot caught down between them.

If you notice those trees, those are eucalyptus.

The eucalyptus seems to be the tree they are mainly using as they try to reforest parts of the island. I have no idea why they chose a tree from Australia. The fun part here was plucking a leaf and crushing it to smell the eucalyptus vapors. (It also made my fingers sticky with the gum.)

Here’s a closer look at Maunga Kuma.

Maunga Kuma

You can see the tuff sticking out all over the place.

Then we got to the top of Maunga Terevaka. There were of course spectacular views, and the Pacific Ocean in all directions. Here’s a look almost due east towards the Poike Peninsula (an easily recognized landmark.)

Poike Peninsula from Atop Maung Terevaka

Looking west instead (click on the picture for a larger version), you can see a cruise liner heading west into the sunset. This was a Holland American on a round-the-world trip continuing its way to Pitcairn Island and Tahiti.

Departing Cruise Liner

Here are Machi and I, conquering the summit. This picture looks north (more or less). But there was nothing but Pacific Ocean no matter what direction we looked.

We’re on Top of the World

Yes, that’s a horse skull atop the cairn.

Here’s Machi on the way down passing the caldera of the volcano. It’s just a grass-filled depression, maybe 50-100 feet deep.

Machi Passing the Caldera

The horses were waiting for us on the way down.

Herding Our Way Down

It suddenly occurred to me, contemplating our barefoot hike, that one way to see just how wild the horses were was to see if they were barefoot, too. Oh well, too late to find out now.