The World’s Navel

There are so many cool places to visit on Easter Island but the one we didn’t know about before arrival was the Navel of the World. We drove around the island and stopped at Te Pito Kura on the northern coast.

We asked what we’d see when getting our park passes stamped and we were told about the big moai that had been pushed over.

There was a bit of a walk down to the coast over a makeshift path.

This moai actually has a name. He’s Paro, and is said to be the biggest ever set upright on an ahu.

He is ten meters tall and weighs 80 tons. He’s been lying on his face since around 1838. Kind of sad.

The red stone is called a pukao and it originally sat on the head. That in itself weighs 12 tons. How did they move these pieces from two different quarries and set them in place without heavy machinery?

We were disappointed with only one moai lying on the ground and were looking forward to seeing the line of standing moai on Ahu Tongariki so left pretty quickly and got back on the road. That evening we noticed a comment on a tourist map about the Navel of World or Te Pito Kura. We missed something!

So, after seeing other sites on our list we returned to some of the things we missed.

This time we asked for directions to the Navel were told to keep going to the left passed the ahu, towards the water.

There it was inside a circle of stones to prevent tourists from getting too close.

The legend is that this stone was brought to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) by their first and founding king, Hotu Matu’a. Supposedly it was bought by boat from someplace called Hiva and isn’t indigenous to the island. It does have some magnetic properties as evidenced by some YouTube videos I’ve recently watched.

Supposedly there are supernatural powers or energy that can be helpful to those who sit on the four smaller stones and rub their hands on the big main one. We weren’t able to get close enough to test it out for ourselves, though.

~ Freddy