Quarry

We visited a site where they recreated the original boat shaped grass houses.

There were many more houses dotting the area, giving you a perspective of the size of the village that had been here.

 There were a number of Moai that had been toppled - you can see a couple of the hats in the foreground.

One of the hats had been carved with a petroglyph.

The coast around the island is almost uniformly rocky with lots of surf and spray.

 We then went to the Moai quarry.

 There are a number of Moai that were never separated from the stone beneath them - some of them are the largest ever formed.

 Even here, later Islanders carved many petroglyphs

 After the Moai were separated from the quarry, they were stood up for further work prior to being moved to where they would end up standing. These are all clearly unfinished Moai because their eyes were not shaped until they were at their final destination. But they also still have pieces at the back that needed to be chipped off before they were moved. And the ears needed to be carved as well.

 There were a number of Moai that had never reached their goal, lying on the ground on the way to their destined positions.

 Then we went to the fifteen Moai on the platform at the coast near the quarry. Moai were generally added to platforms as important people died. The leftmost Moai is the first, and others are gradually added to the right, so this would not have been fifteen friends - they might represent fifteen generations.

 Here, there were several places where petroglyths had been carved.

 This was a place where births took place

 And these were lodestones.

On a second platform the Moai had been toppled. The stones at the back of the platform had been carefully laid - you can see the quarry in the background.

But you could see the Moai scattered around.

 We went to a beach near the quarry. There was a beach at the town, but this was much bigger, and the only real beach I saw on Easter Island.

The Moai here were the last ones to be toppled, and possibly because of the sand, they had fared better than a number of others around the island - their hats were even in a good enough condition to be put back on when they were restored.

One of the graves at the back was still visible.

  And petroglyphs had been carved on the back of each Moai.