Continuing on, we went up to the ceremonial village of ‘ORongo, located on the southwest tip of the island.

I say ceremonial, because nobody ever lived here.

Yes that’s right, the Rapa Nui built a giant village with 53 stone huts on the side of a cliff and they never ever inhabited it.

Then again their ancestors deforested their entire island down to the last tree in order to transport giant rock maoi across the entire place that they then later took upon themselves to topple and face plant, so why am I surprised in the slightest?

Once a year all the tribes of the island would gather at ‘Orongo for the annual manutara race.  The manutara (or Sooty Tern) is a small sea faring bird laying an even smaller egg.  These birds came by to Easter Island once a year to nest, squawking furiously in the process to announce their arrival.

These birds then hung out on Moto Iti, Moto Kao Kao and Moto Nui, a set of small islands off of Easter Island, and the people of Rapa Nui would hold a contest to find the first egg on these islands.

It was a messy kind of a race.  Each tribe and their king would appoint a representative, and over a several day contest, the representative would start from the village, climb down the cliff, swim across shark infested waters, climb up to the islands, scramble furiously to find a tiny egg, and somehow make it back across the channel with the egg intact without dying, tripping, falling or getting killed by the fellow contestants.  After all, everything was fair game up to the point the winner was declared.

Wow it is serious.

So about those rock huts?

They were built to protect the kings during the race so that rival tribes who of course hated each other wouldn’t try to assassinate one another at night.  The kings only used these huts to sleep in for the 3-4 days once a year.

Of course I wondered –

Why not just kill everyone by smoking them in the hut?

What about during the day when everyone is out watching the race?

Or on arrival or on departure?

And to think, this contest happened yearly.

I am confused.

Crazy rituals.