Friday 23rd
Moai Statue
A final highlight of the museum was a Moai statue from Easter Island. It was massive! I was sad that we wouldn’t be able to afford to go to Easter Island as part of our trip – flights from Santiago cost from US$600 each!! – so it was wonderful to see a whole room devoted to the place and to see a REAL statue taken from the island itself. They were carved from the rock from an extinct volcano, apparently they called the site a ‘nursery’, and some are as high as 21m tall. The statues are said to represent the faces of the tribespeople’s ancestors – to help guard the island and bring prosperity and agricultural success. The people started to increase the number of statues as the agricultural situation worsened, yet ironically, the building of the statues meant cutting down more trees to transport the massive stone structures across the island… which of course resulted in their worsening agricultural state. Alanis Morisette would have had a field day.
allysadventuresinwonderlands 