On a site away from the water but overlooking the sea, we came to the entrance to the Sebastian Englert Museum. This was a well presented, artefact rich 15,000 piece collection of Rapa Nui’s past. The museum was started in 1973 and named after a German Capuchin missionary who had spent the later part of his life studying, documenting Rapa Nui society and presenting it to the world.
One of the exhibits that impressed me was a map drawn by Captain Cook during his visit in 1774 that has superimposed over it a NASA satellite outline of the island taken from space. The accuracy of Cook’s map was amazing.
Reading the description of the many excellent exhibits was time-consuming as the descriptions were in Spanish but a book of translations was provided by the Museum.
The afternoon consisted of a late lunch at Cafe Raá, a stroll round the shopping area and organising our rental car. The car hire process was casual and friendly as the owner was the sister of the family who ran the guest house. There wasn’t much use checking the vehicle for scratch marks, it was already pretty well worn. But it was $20 a day less than the renter down the road. It proved to be reliable until two days later, when we were trapped in a rainstorm it refused to start. We sat there wondering what to do next, but the rain eased and we tried again and wolla it started.
We drove back to the guest house just as an afternoon shower blew in. But here, like many of the Pacific islands, the showers blow over quickly and we decided that we’d drive out to the quarry site at Puna Pau where the topknots were made. This is about a 20 minute drive on the town side of the island. The site on a hillside with quite tall grass, shows a number of the cylindrical red rock “hats” in different stages of production. The stone is rough, more porous than the basalt stone of the figures. The topknots or pukao were made in the style of the hair of local men at that time. It is known that these were placed on the statues after they were erected on the platforms but it is not known how this was achieved. There isn’t a lot to see at the quarry, but from the top of the hill there were extensive views over the rolling hills back to the town of Hanga Roa.
