Shopping in Hanga Roa, Easter Island

This post is part of a retrospective on our trip to Easter Island for the Tapati Rapa Nui festival in February, 2004.

After our day seeing moai in various states of completion and decay, we spent a few leisurely mornings shopping in the town of Hanga Roa and visiting the Rapa Nui Museum.  The town was in walking distance from our hotel, the Taha Tai Hotel, and featured some nice restaurants and shops. I enjoyed shopping on a quiet little street at the Mercado Artisanal, which featured handmade crafts of -- you guessed it, moai big and small. 

The Mercado is actually an open air market with little grass tiki huts with various vendors selling key chains, magnets, statues big and small, and other goods.  When we visited, it was a lazy day with not many tourists. The people working the stands were friendly and charming. They forgave my poor attempts at Spanish, and many of them spoke enough English to be able to barter and complete a sales transaction.

I met a woman from Connecticut at one of the key chain vendors, who told me that she came to this island every year for the past twenty years, and it was her favorite place on earth. The island is not that big, so there's not a huge variety of things to do, but I could certainly see getting attached to it and wanting to return.  We go to Kauai every other year for the same reasons, but it's only a four hour flight from California.  I admired her dedication in getting here every year, despite the travel.

The shops in the Mercado had a variety of wooden and stone moai to choose from, from tiny to about the size of Alexander.  I wasn't sure how anyone would pack a 4 ft tall stone statuary in his or her luggage, but I guess they could ship it home to you at some exhorbitant rate.  I opted for the ones that we could fit in our pockets or in the spare spaces in our suitcases, which were already pretty full from our trip to Iguazu Falls.

  Some of the mini-moai were quite expensive, and there were a few higher-end shops along the main street in Hanga Roa that had more artistic rendering and some bark paintings as well.  Frank was particularly interested in some shellacked wood carvings of what Alexander called "skinny nekkid guys" which were some kind of special carvings of skeletal-looking men with large penises protruding out.  I had no idea what these guys were supposed to be, but we watched an Easter Island documentary narrated by Sir Richard Attenborough where he extolled the virtues of Skinny Nekkid Guys, so Frank had to have one.

We walked around the town of Hanga Roa a few times during our stay in Easter Island, visiting the post office, the fire station, a church, and a large hall that displayed the native crafts that were carved and made for the Tapati Festival.  The arts & crafts competition was something fierce, and each of the Island Queen candidates had to enlist people with skills at carving, sewing, and cooking, as well as for the athletic events and the singing and dancing competitions.  There was something for just about everyone on the island to compete in, if so moved.

We found the best deals on little moai statues not in the town, but out by one of the moai by the sea.  The moai was one of the few with eyes, and a couple of industrious teens had set up a blanket with carvings, complete with Ahu bases and top knots.  They were hanging out by the seashore, with a little blanket spread out, and one of them was carving new ones while they waited for tourists to show up. I bought one for about $5, whereas most of the ones in town were $10-$15, even after bargaining with the shop keepers.  I managed to get it home without breaking it.

There was one tiny movie house in Hanga Roa, attached to a Bed & Breakfast, that seemed to be playing the 1994 film Rapa Nui, starring Jason Scott Lee and Esai Morales, every night.  We had prepared for our trip by watching this movie, but wouldn't let Alexander see it due to the "R" rating.  It wasn't a bad movie, but it played fast and loose with the historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.  The moai carving and the birdman cult didn't actually co-exist on Rapa Nui, but it gives an interesting look at some possibilities for why the culture nearly died out in the 19th century.  We passed right on by the movie theatre, since it wasn't a film for Alexander to see, but if you're planning to go to Easter Island, you might want to watch it before you go, but only after the kids go to bed.

Alexander enjoyed running up and down the streets of Hanga Roa, since there was not much traffic.  He was fascinated by fire trucks, so the fire station was a hit.  We didn't see any firemen around, but the truck was sitting outside and looked fairly new.  Every little boy's mom knows that any sighting of a fire truck of any kind is enough to make them lose their minds with joy. 

I liked the look for this little Catholic church, which had the trappings of a regular church, with an island flair. The markings on the front of the church were like the petroglyphs and cave paintings we saw during our trip in various parts of the island.