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Photo Tour: Rano Raraku: Moai Quarry

Easter Island -- which you can see in the previous page, if you haven't already -- is best-known for the moai, the ancient stone figures of humans. The stone for those moai comes from a quarry called Rano Raraku, which is an old volcanic crater. As you walk in the entrance, you see that the hillside in front of you is covered with moai. Trails lead around the back, up the sides of the slope, and into the crater itself. Everywhere are more moai: some standing, some fallen, many buried up to their faces or farther -- and some only partly-carved from the volcanic rock, as if you'd walked up just after the crew stopped work.

In this page, I'll take you around the quarry with no captions: just the photos. Although some of these shots are here because I liked the composition (more for the art than for the subject matter), I hope that they also give you some sense of what it's like to be out here in the countryside, in an ancient place like Easter Island, surrounded by huge statues made by and modeled on former residents. After a little while (I spent five hours here!), it didn't feel eerie: it felt a little like there were people around me... even though, for a lot of the time, I was completely alone. This was quite a place to end my around-the-world trip!

To get a larger version of any picture (except the first panoramic shot), click on it; a new window should open. When you close that window, this window should still be here.

Moai panorama
Entrance
 View from just inside entrance
Large moai in foreground, smaller moai on hill in background
 Two moai in foreground, more -- and cliffs -- in background
Moai where it was being quarried from the rock face
 Mostly-buried moai with just face showing to the sky
Moai on its back, ocean in background
 Top of toppled and broken moai
Side view of moai buried to its nose
Large moai face at left, more-distant face at middle
 Close-up of moai face
Moai face in profile at left edge, two more in background
 Two moai, one on its back and one facing forward
Moai along path
 Moai "parade" from background cliff

[Previous page: Around Easter Island] [Next page: Headed for Home]
[Tour start: Around the World 2003] [Tours]

(These photographs are Copyright © 2003 by Jerry Peek. Much higher-resolution versions of most images, and many other images too, are available at Jerry Peek Photography. Photos are available at reduced prices, or free, for non-commercial use.)

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