This post is part of a retrospective series on our trip to Easter Island in 2004 for the Tapati Rapa Nui Festival. Note: some of the photos in this post are rated PG for partial nudity.
February 5, 2004
In the afternoon of our second day on Easter Island, we caught a cab to take us to the big "Birdman" competition at the lake in the volcano. By 'taxi" I mean beat-up, grimey blue Gremlin with no seatbelts and a driver who was about 8 months pregnant. I think she may have been our tour guide China's cousin. China wasn't with us on this day, but promised she'd send a taxi for us, and she did. Anyway, the driver didn't speak much English,but she knew where we needed to go. She drove across the dustry roads and went off-road a bit to drop us near an entrance to the festival that didn't require risking life and limb and a steep climb up the side of the volcano to see the race.
We walked through a narrow canyon of red rock a with a stream of people all headed toward the same destination, the volcano crater lake, Rano Raraku. In this event, young men representing one or the other of the Rapa Nui Queen contestants compete in a sort of native triathalon.
This event was supposed to be a modern version of the "Birdman" (tangata manu) competition that took place on the island in the 17th and 18th centuries, long after the moai-building had been abandoned. The tangata manu (bird-man), was crowned on the island after an annual competition to collect the first sooty tern (manu tara) egg of the season from the islet of Moto Nui, across from the clifftop village of Orongo. Whoever could swim to the island, retrieve the egg and return it unbroken to the tribe was named "birdman" and held a place of honor in the tribe. The Birdmen cult worshipped the god Meke-meke, the god of all humanity and fertility, so the egg symbolized fertility. At any rate, the competitors had to jump off a cliff and swim through dangerous waters to get the first egg of the season. Think of it as a more difficult version of an egg-on-a spoon race, only with sharks.
In the modern-day version, there weren't any bird eggs to capture, but athletic prowess was definitely tested. The contestants started by swimming across the reedy lake, then rowing back across the lake in a tortora raft, which looked like a surfboard that they fashioned out of reeds. The third part of the event is picking up about 50 pounds of bananas, then running the half circumference of the
lake with bananas on their shoulders, dropping the bananas, race up the
side of the volcano crater to the finish line. I'm not sure about the order, but all I know is there were about thirty nearly-naked men running, swimming, and dropping their bananas to the cheers of an adoring crowd.
We walked into the crowd just as the men were taking their places to start swimming across the lake. They were pretty far away, so I couldn't see what they were wearing. I started up a conversation with a woman from Dallas as the men were starting to take up the bananas and run around the lake. We were comparing notes about our stays on Easter Island (both of us were enjoying it). Alex was busily digging in a mud puddle and not paying much attention to the race or the crowd.
Just then, a couple of nearly-naked, muscular men wearing not much more than face paint and the skimpiest of g-strings made of some kind of natural fabric, darted past us. I managed to get my camera out and focus long enough to get a picture.
Alex momentarily looked up from his digging, giggled and said, "I saw his butt!"
The fellows each picked up a load of bananas and headed up the side of the mountain.
There were quite a few more naked butts to follow, each of them equally trim fellows carrying bananas. Further up the trail, they dropped their bananas and we could see them running up the side of the mountain. One older-looking fellow brought up the rear, about five minutes after the rest of the pack, which caused great a roar from the crowd.
Just as the race was ending, we were treated to a sudden downpour, where the skies just opened up and we were drenched almost instantaneously. We traipsed back through the mud to find our taxi, and our driver was not far behind us. On the way back to the hotel, the skies cleared as suddenly as the rain started, and we had a view of one of the most spectacularly vivid rainbows I've ever seen.
Clearly, the gods were smiling.
