DEliTOUR: Turning heads on Easter Island

Easter Island is also known as Isla de Pascua. That's Spanish. Now your Easter Island was on of the last places to be colonised by humans, along with New Zealand, back in 4-500 AD. It is under Chilean control but the island is definately more Polynesian than Latin American, and there is a typically relaxed independence movement. The island is only 25-35km in diameter. All the natural resources have been raped by years of unsustainable farming of the land and sea, and by thr removal of the forest. And the indiginous wildlife has pretty much been wiped out by humans and/or introduced species. But there is a beach. And there are big stone busts. Big, big stone busts. Yes, those ones you have seen on TV. They are everywhere.

It turns out that the big eared and the little eared tribes started fighting at about the same time that the belief system altered to focus around a strange birdman cult. But it is generally agreed that the statues were erected by families to display wealth and to curry favour. In reality all the statues were knocked down during the fighting (17-18 centuries if I remember rightly) but some enterprising locals and some Japanese sponsorship has seen many re-erected in the last 50 years - in their original locations, on original plynths, and to spectacular effect.

There are statue sights all over the island and we had a scooter for three days and set out to see pretty much all of them. The island had one good road but most it was interconnected dirt tracks. We had ill fitting helmets, plenty of sunblock under the scorching blue sky, and we burned up the island - it was my scooter-piloting coming of age.

The views, statues, burial grounds, cliffs, volcano cones, tumbling Pacific ocean, warm locals, cheap prices and Polynesian-Latin mis made it a very special place. And then we found the crater lakes. Inland there was the volcanic crater lake at the site of the mining of most of the statues. The heads had been carved out of the rock and then transported downhill from here to the resting places (always on the coast facing inland). The 'mine' looked like it had been abandoned mid-shift as there are hundreds of Moai (that's the correct name for the heads) scattered all around in various stages of erection, including a 21m giant.

Ranu Kau, the other crater lake, is one of the most cosmic places I have ever witnessed. It is right by the sea, so there are spectacular paths up to the rim, and on the seaward side there are a series of temples and platforms (called Orongo) precariously perched with high cliffs down to the Pacific on one side and the steep slope into the moonscape of the extinct volcano and its microclimate that has resulted in unusual algal growths across its 1 mile diamater.