Chile Guide
Easter Island and the Juan Fernández Archipelago
Ahu Tongariki
The fifteen colossal moai lined up on AHU TONGARIKI make a sensational sight. This was the largest number of moai ever erected on a single ahu, and the platform, some 200m long, was the largest built on the island. It was totally destroyed in 1960 when a massive tsunami, caused by an earthquake in Chile, swept across this corner of the island, dragging the platform blocks and the statues 90m inland – a remarkable distance, given that the statues weigh up to thirty tonnes each.
In November 1988, Sergio Rapu, former Governor of Easter Island, was being interviewed for a Japanese television programme, and said that if they had a crane they could save the moai; a Japanese man watching the show decided to act and a committee was set up in Japan. The whole site was restored by Chilean archeologists Claudio Cristino and Patricia Vargas of the Easter Island Studies Institute, University of Chile, in a five-year project; the project team included a group of forty islanders, specialists from the Nara Institute of Japan and recognized international experts in stone conservation. The restoration was completed in 1995 and today the statues stand tall and proud on their ahu, the very picture of dignity. One of them is wearing a red topknot, and several have holes in their earlobes, which perhaps had obsidian or coral disks inserted in them. The most curious feature, though, is the faint outline of goatee beards carved on some of these moai – among the very few on the island with such facial decoration.