Seven days wasn't anywhere near enough to fully discover the country, but we did what we could with our time there. I really enjoyed the scenery and tea shops, and Greg liked the whiskey and the castles. We stayed at a hotel in Powerscourt, a park about a half hour's drive from Dublin. It had a lot of nice bike trails and hiking trails, and had the biggest waterfall in the country.
We spent a lot of time in Dublin exploring the city. We did a tour of the Jameson Factory and the Guiness Factory, both of which were in the city. The Jameson Factory was much smaller and we learned a lot about whiskey and how it's made. They showed us how the grains were cooked and what their triple distilling process involved. An interesting thing about their whiskey is that a large part of the flavor comes from the barrels they store it in. They use "seasoned" barrels, meaning they have been used to store another type of alcohol previously, so that their whiskey takes on a small amount of the character from that alcohol. Some of their barrels come from a burbon factory in Kentucky, which makes it sweet. At the end we all got some Jameson whiskey, and I learned that it is totally delicious with ginger ale and lime. Here is Greg participating in a whiskey tasting at the factory.
The Guiness Factory was huge, and more like an interactive museum. They showed the whole process of how Guiness is made, from harvesting the grains to adding the hops to the final product. Apparently hops are a type of plant, and they are used to preserve the beer.
This was water from the water source they use to make the beer.
They had a giant sculpture designed to look like a glass of Guiness, used in this advertisement.
At the end of the tour we went to the top to get a free pint of Guiness. We weren't too crazy about the beer, but there was a very nice view from the top over Dublin. The Guiness Factory is the tallest building in Dublin, and on the top floor at the bar you had a panoramic view of the city.
One thing I loved about Dublin was all of the tea shops. They were like coffee shops, but when you walk in there are many jars of loose leaf teas out, so you can smell them before ordering a cup. They had delicious teas like Oolong, Pu'ehr, and a new one that I discovered called Rooibos which comes from South Africa.
We did a bit of exploring on the West side of the country with a tour of the Blarney Castle and Cork. It was a rail tour so we took the train out there, and it was an all day trip. This was the Blarney Castle.
People were much smaller back when this castle was built. There were some stairways we could only just fit into to climb. And the ceilings and entrances were very small.
The entire structure was made of stone.
The bottom 6 inches of this rock is the Blarney Stone. Legend has it that if you kiss it, you will receive the gift of eloquence. You have to lie on your back and hold onto the bars to kiss it backwards, which is the easiest way since there is a drop right before it. I was told by someone who used to live in Ireland that the locals pee on this stone so Greg and I passed on kissing it.
This was the highest budget church to build in Ireland. It is huge, and has beautiful stained glass windows on the inside.
Greg's phone took this picture - my camera didn't come close in quality.
We also saw the Book of Kells and the library at Trinity College.
I was very impressed with the artwork in the ancient texts from the scribes. I wasn't able to get any pictures of them, but every page had detailed, intricate calligraphy and illustrations. I found some pictures of it online, just to give you an idea. Keep in mind how small these books were, they must have used a tool to get in all of that detail.
The last leg of our trip was spent at Easter Island, otherwise knows as Rapa Nui. It is very remote, in the middle of the Pacific, so it took a lot of time to get there. Just the flight from the mainland of Santiago to the island was over 5 hours, to give you an idea of how remote it is. Because of this its culture was uninfluenced by western civilization for a long time, and even now, being that it is owned by Chile and after the work the missionaries did, it still has a very strong sense of Pacific island culture among the natives. English wasn't common on the island, the natives all spoke Spanish and Rapa Nui. Greg and I were able to get by fine with our limited Spanish, and we knew two words in Rapa Nui - Iorana and Maururu. Iorana means hello, good morning, good afternoon, and good bye, and Maururu means thank you. When we arrived, the owner of the hotel we were staying at greeted us at the airport with flower necklaces.
We don't know too much about the history of Easter Island, as very little of it was documented and we don't know how to read their written language. Their history was passed down through word of mouth. We do know that the giant statues standing around the island, the Maoi, were created to protect the graves of their elite and the island. They stood atop ahus, which is where the bones of their leaders were buried. The Moais were created from an extinct volcano on the island called Ranu Raraku, and the big headpieces on their heads, Pukaos, were created from another crater, Puna Pao. The headpieces represented a common hairstyle from their day. Before the fall of the statues, there were 17 tribes on the island, and each tribe had two classes - long ears and short ears. The long ears stretched their ears out, and most of the Moai represent people from this class. The short ears did not stretch their ears and were the slaves. There is one Moai representing a short-eared person. There was a big war in the 17th century between the two classes which caused the destruction of many of the statues around the island. After the war, the class system started to disappear and a new system was put in place to determine the leader of the island, which was called the Birdman competition. They also stopped created Moais around then. The Birdman competition was a contest where one man was selected from each tribe to swim to a local island, collect an egg from a bird that nested there, and the first to return with the egg ruled the island for that year. They stopped this competition after the first missionaries appeared on the island in the 1800's, however it still plays a big part in their culture. Their church has symbols from the Birdman competition on top of the statues of all of its saints.
Since then missionaries came, and their Moais were destroyed, their history took a darker turn. They were exploited many times and taken into the slave trade. The biggest devastation the island faced, however, came from disease. At one point a large group from the island were taken to be sold as slaves, but it was done illegally, so when the government of that ship found out, they demanded that the islanders be returned. When the islanders were returned, they brought back with them a foreign disease that wiped out almost the entire island. Only about 100 remained, and all of the natives who live on Easter Island now are descendants from that small group. The population has since recovered, and now the island has about 4000 people living on it. Slavery wasn't the only way they were exploited, some people came there to use the land as well. There was a sheep company that occupied the island for awhile. They told all of the natives to live in what is now the main town, Hanga Roa, and took the stones from their houses to build fences around the island for their sheep. The sheep company isn't there anymore and now the islanders can live where they want, but it wasn't until recently that the exploitation stopped. The island was recognized as an important historical site, and many efforts have been made to restore the Moais and learn about their history. Despite all of the hardships the islanders have faced over the past few centuries, or maybe because of them, the Rapa Nui people are a very strong race. They have a lot of pride in their land, their culture, and heritage. And like the Cuzconians, they don't like leaving their island. They see something special in it that they don't see anywhere else.
It wasn't until recently that the island became as accessible as it is today, and thus open to tourism. It used to be the case that to get to the island you had to take a ship, and it was a few weeks journey from the mainland to get there. Then there were some planes, but they didn't run very frequently. Now there are planes that go to and from the island a few times a week, making the trip very doable. There is still a lot of mystery in the island, and I think that is what attracts most people to it.
During the time of the creation of the Moais, we don't know how they were transported from the volcano to their final place or how their Pukaos were placed on their heads. Some of the statues weigh as much as 80 tons, so it was not an easy feat. The locals will say they walked to their final place, using a magic called Mana. And it is said that when they reached their final location, the eyes on the statues would be hollowed out so that coral eyes could be fitted in place. Once it had its eyes it could protect the island, and had Mana. All of the statues fell down at one point, so every standing statue on the island today was reconstructed at one point. There are no coral eyes left, save for one that exists at the museum on the island.
Notice in this statue the eye socket isn't completely hollowed out - it's just an angle. That means that it fell over in transit and never reached its destination. The statues that reached their destinations had much bigger sockets so that the coral eyes were able to fit in place.
This is the coral eye in the museum.
The Moai statues were made at a crater called Ranu Raraku. Here, there are statues in all stages of completion. When the people stopped making them, they were all abandoned. On the side of the crater they became buried due to the sediment the rain brought over the years.
There were a bunch inside of the crater too, also buried.
Here Greg is standing in front of one that wasn't finished yet - it was lying on its back, still attached to the crater. They were carved in all different positions depending on what the shape of the rock was at the place they were being carved. One of the people in our tour group asked why the people didn't just break off the rock, transport that to the final location and carve there, which would have been simpler. And the answer was that since this was the only source of that material on the island, they didn't want to waste any of it - so they made the statues right there using the least amount of rock for each one. It's quite an impressive feat if you think about it, to create something so large and heavy on its side that will be able to balance when standing up. It took multiple people to create each one, and the process took about a year. They used small, sharpened rocks to do the carving.
This is the only Maoi made with short ears. It is also the only Maoi with feet.
The Pukaos were made here, at Puna Pao - a similar crater, but with a redder stone.
This is the largest group of standing Moai - there are 15 total. The original 15 were destroyed by a tsunami, and were recently restored by a Japanese company. They were in many pieces along the field, so it was a big effort to find all of the pieces and put them together seamlessly. Because they had to be put back together, they weren't strong enough to hold the Pukaos anymore. Only one of them was, the second to the camera. To get the Pukao on its head, the Japanese company used a giant crane to put it in place. Part of the effort was an advertisement for that crane they used.
The company also placed a mound at the end of it that you could stand on to look like you're a part of the line up. Greg fits in perfectly here.
There are petroglyphs around the island too, carved into the rocks. The Moais and their Pukaos also had petroglyphs carved into them when they were created, but over time the weather and elements have erased most of them.
This is an interesting rock that was used in their religious rituals for awhile - it is called Te pito o te henua, or the naval of the world. That name was also given to the island. The first king of the island, Hotu Matua, brought it with him when he arrived many centuries ago. The material that this rock is made of isn't found anywhere else on earth, so scientists believe it was a meteor. Notice how it is perfectly round. The rock is magnetic also, and if you hold your hands close to it, some people feel them start to tingle. I didn't feel the tingling, but I did feel warmth coming from it.
The people used to live in both long houses and caves. Long houses looked like overturned canoes, and were made with the reeds found along the island. This is the frame for one of them. The rocks in the front of it making the semi-circle made up a porch area which helped stabilize the ground in the rainy season.
And the caves were formed by pockets of lava. They provided good protection from the elements, however, they were only used for sleeping because they were so dark. Here is one without its entryway. Traditionally the entryway was very small to protect from the wind. The Rapa Nui people were fairly large so they had to crouch to get in.
This is what the entryway looked like.
This is what one of their chicken coops looked like. There aren't many of these left.
Today the island has many free chickens and hens running around. When the sheep company came and took the stones from the villagers to build their fence, they took the stones from their chicken coops too. So all of the chickens were set free, and now the chickens running around the island are because of that. People don't eat them however. Apparently their meat is tough, and their eggs are small and not very tasty. The chicken meat and eggs they eat are imported from the mainland.
Here was a mother with her little chicks following her around.
Every morning (when it wasn't raining) at the crack of dawn, every single chicken and hen on the island would start cock-a-doodle-doing for a good hour to wake everyone up. It was kind of comical to hear them all in chorus like that. So Greg and I didn't sleep in much on the island, which was fine because there was more to see during the day than at night.
The island had a lot of stray animals on it. There were tons of dogs and cats, and then there were also the chickens, horses, and cows. We made many furry friends along the way, most of the dogs were friendly. Here were some of the wild horses we saw.
My favorite stray was a tiny baby kitten we saw on the sidewalk. It couldn't have been more than a few weeks old, and it was super friendly.
There was a man looking after it and its mom, and he came out and greeted us when he saw we were petting the kitten. When the man picked up the kitten, it fit entirely in his hand it was so tiny.
On the whole, the island is a very safe place to be. The people are trustworthy, and theft is very rare. Assault is unheard of. However, there was one time during this trip when I feared for my safety. I was walking by myself to pick up a drink (Greg ran back to the room to get something), and out of nowhere a German Shephard runs out of someone's driveway and starts barking and growling at me. I don't think he was going to bite, but for whatever reason he felt threatened by me and felt the need to threaten me back. I was pretty freightened, as I had no defense against a dog like that should he decide to attack. Soon after, a man came running out of the driveway and told the dog to be quiet and go back inside, and Greg also came running over to help. The dog eventually went away when he saw he was outnumbered, but that experience shook me up a bit. I guess that kind of thing happens when you have stray dogs running around.
However, most of the dogs we met were very friendly and liked to be pet. Usually we would pet one and it would follow us around for a bit - just like that we were friends. There were a lot of German Shephards, some Labs, I saw one Husky, and there were some of those dogs with the curly white hair also. And of course there were a lot of mutts. There weren't as many cats, but there were two at the hotel we got friendly with.
The food on the island was delicious. I had a lot of fish while I was there, and it was all locally caught and fresh. Usually it came with a fruit in the sauce also, like pineapple.
At the hotel we stayed at, we had fresh papaya and papaya juice every morning, made with fruit that grew right in the backyard.
And they had a small farmer's market every morning. I bought these bananas that were very small and plump, and they tasted much sweeter than our bananas. I heard once that bananas are actually a type of berry, I could taste that in these ones. They had a bit of that tangy taste you find in strawberries or blackberries.
This is their church. Inside it has statues of all of the saints, but if you look on their heads you'll see a bird symbol. That's the symbol from the Birdman competition they used to hold.
While we were on the island we saw some dance shows, where they played traditional music and showed us their traditional dance. My pictures from it didn't come out very good, but Greg took some nice videos.
Our last night there, we saw a dance that included dinner, cooked in their old way - in the ground. They covered the food with palm leaves, and then with dirt, and had it cook underground for a few hours. They cooked vegetables and meat like this, and it was all delicious. Here they were uncovering it for us to eat.
They painted our faces for the event too. It was at night so the lighting isn't too good in these shots, but the paint started out the same color as our skin, and as it dried it turned white.
Lastly, this is the spot where Greg proposed. It was on top of the crater where the Birdman festival took place. The small island where the men would swim to get the egg is close to it, and people would watch from up here. There's a lake inside the crater.
