"Hard to miss," I said. "Obviously these horses have the run of the town. I thought when that fellow Fairweather shouted 'horse manure' out at the quarry this morning, that it was just a rather quaint expression. Here it is entirely appropriate. The other feature that distinguishes this place from home is cell phones or rather the lack thereof."
"That, too," Moira agreed. "Horse poop and no cell phones. I'm sure they'll get cell phones soon enough, but I'm not sure what they're going to do about the horse poop. Look! What's this?" We had come upon a building where several people, obviously residents, crowded around an open door. "Come on. Let's see what's going on."
"I hope we aren't crashing a funeral," I said.
"You are such a drag, Lara," she sighed.
What was going on was some extraordinary singing, a group of young men and women who were singing in quite wonderful harmony and with great enthusiasm. The beat was infectious, and soon my toes were tapping. Nobody seemed to mind that we were there, and indeed several people made some room so we could see better.
A tall, attractive woman with beautiful tawny skin and lark hair and eyes smiled at us, and Moira asked what was ping on. "Preparation for Tapati Rapa Nui," the woman said. "You would call it a folklore festival, I think. At the end of January, or early February, of every year, we celebrate our heritage. We recreate some of the rituals of our past— for example, those associated with the cult of the bird man at Orongo. The island is packed with tourists for a couple of weeks. Young men have to swim out to a little islet called Motu Nui and wait for the first bird's egg. Have you been to the ceremonial center of Orongo yet?"
"Tomorrow morning," Moira said.
"That's where the cult of the bird man ceremonies took place for about two hundred years, until the missionaries arrived in the late eighteen hundreds, and the island was converted to Christianity. At the festival, we try to recreate those ceremonies. There is lots of dancing and singing, and there are all kinds of competitions. There is also a festival queen. Two young women are in the running this year, and their friends and families participate in the festival activities in an effort to help them. Everyone does what they can to help the candidate of their choice. One of the two girls, Gabriela, is a member of my family, so I will be supporting her.
"The stakes are very high," she said. "This year's winner gets a university education in Chile, completely paid for. Last year there was a very nice car as a prize. Stay as long as you like," she said. We did listen for a while longer, but I think we both felt like interlopers, so after a few minutes we moved on.
The caleta was very pleasant—a group of pretty buildings facing tiny boats in brilliant yellow, blue, and red bobbing in the wake. A moai stood there, back to the sea, gazing over the town. We continued along, the sea on our left, wandering farther afield. We seemed to be on the outskirts of the town when we came upon a small cemetery overlooking the Pacific. It was not large, and while the gate was shut, it was held only by a loosely twisted rope, so we went in and wandered among the simple graves, most with just a white wooden cross, the graves themselves planted with bright flowers. On the crosses were unfamiliar names like Pakarati, Tepano, Nahoe, Hotus, and Rapu, interspersed with many Spanish and even some English names.
It was getting late in the day, but Moira spotted another group of moai on their ahu on the headlands past the cemetery, so we walked on. A gate blocked the road, but it was easy enough, as it had been at the cemetery, to pry it open enough to get by. A few people watched us, but no one made any attempt to stop us.
As we stood gazing at five moai on an ahu positioned once again with their backs to the sea, we heard some shouts and turned back to the road to see several horses coming our way, accompanied by two men on horseback. The horses were lovely, a striking reddish color, with dark manes and pale faces, but somewhere not far away someone honked a car horn, and the horses bolted straight for us. There were at least fifteen of them, and their hooves on the rocky soil sounded like thunder. Moira and I clutched at each other and stood facing them, poised to run, although I, for one, had no idea which way to turn. When they were close enough that we could hear and almost feel their breath, and it seemed certain we were going to be trampled, the pack parted and swerved to either side of us, and in a moment or two they were gone. It took only a few seconds, but it was terrifying.
"That was exciting," Moira observed dryly when we'd found our voices again. "Let's go back to the harbor. I saw some restaurants there. It would be nice to have dinner by the sea. I like looking at it, even if the moai don't. I'm sure there is an explanation of why they all have their backs to the water, but I haven't heard it yet. Dave probably knows, but I'm afraid to ask him, lest he hold me hostage until I come to hear his paper."
We chose a charming little restaurant with windows on three sides wide open to the street and the harbor, decorated with cheerful blue linens and large and bright posters. The restaurant was deserted with the exception of us, the proprietor, and the chef. Moira ordered a bottle of Chilean sauvignon blanc on the proprietor's recommendation, and we were soon feeling relaxed and grateful to be alone.
A rain shower swept through, and soon we were listening to rain on metal rooftops and a pleasant trickle of water from the eaves. "Didn't you just love the quarry?" Moira said, taking a sip of wine. "I can't believe what we saw today. For some reason, I thought that every picture of a moai I saw over the thirty years since I read Heyerdahl was the same one over and over. At most I thought there might be twenty of them. I had no idea there were almost a thousand all over the island!"
"It is magic," I agreed. "I'm thinking, though, that maybe we should rent a four-wheel-drive vehicle and explore at least part of the island ourselves."
Moira smiled. "That sounds like a very good idea. Will you ever forgive me for making you sign up for this conference?"
I thought about that for a moment. "No," I said, and we both cracked up.
"It's a snake pit," Moira said. "All those arguments! Can you believe these people could have a heated discussion for a whole hour over a potato? What were they going on about? Do you have any idea?"
"It's key to the argument that the carvers of the moai came from South America. The sweet potato is indigenous to South America, but not to Polynesia, so if it's found on Rapa Nui, which it is, then it must have been brought here by people from South America. At least that's the theory. The side that argues for Polynesian carvers says that pollen analysis places the potato here long before anybody arrived, and it's therefore not relevant."
"I'm tempted to say, 'Who cares?' Moira said. "The moai are extraordinary no matter who carved them. I was enraptured by Heyerdahl in my school days and rather taken by his idea of a race of tall, red-headed stonemasons who had journeyed to Rapa Nui, but I'm just as happy to have the moai carved by Polynesians. It's very impressive that they could sail so far across the Pacific and navigate by star maps so long ago. If they could do that, why couldn't they carve moai? But obviously there are some here who do care."
"I'd say they care way too much. I have always believed, perhaps naively, that all who worked in the field were interested in sharing ideas, in advancing the world's knowledge through civilized discussion and study."
"Silly you," Moira said. "Weren't they just dreadful to that nice young man, Brian Murphy? I don't pretend to understand what he was talking about, but surely he didn't deserve the treatment he got at the hands of that awful Edwina Rasmussen, nor did Susie Scace, who seems to be a lovely person."