Jakarta Globe, Mike Leyral, Feb 22, 2015
Far from home on Chile’s Easter Island for Carnival festivities, one middle-aged American woman throws caution to the wind. Stripped down to a thong, she lets a local reveler paint her chest.
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| People take part in dance contest in Hanga Roa on Chile's Easter Island (or Rapa Nui as its inhabitants call it) in the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 10, 2015 as part of the 47th edition of Tapati, an all-out 15-day contest between rival teams to crown a new monarch. (AFP Photo/Gregory Boissy) |
Far from home on Chile’s Easter Island for Carnival festivities, one middle-aged American woman throws caution to the wind. Stripped down to a thong, she lets a local reveler paint her chest.
“If someone
had told me I would end up walking down the street almost naked, I would never
have believed it,” the woman, who only gave her first name Susan, said.
Susan is
one of a few thousand tourists who joined the Pacific island’s 9,000 residents
for Tapati, an exuberant mix of music, dance and traditional sports that takes
place for two weeks every February.
In the
island’s only town Hanga Roa, revelers wait in a long line under the blistering
tropical summer sun to take part in a time-honored ritual — a plunge in an old
tub filled with clay.
A man known
as Ale then spreads with his hand this reddish-brown natural paint on the
bodies of other locals — and any tourist ready to participate.
Then, other
lines form in front of tubs filled with white and yellow paint.
It’s time
for the Rapa Nui — the Polynesian word for both the island and its residents —
to paint symbols, inspired by the local Birdman legend, or characters from the
long-lost Rongorongo system of writing.
Shortly
after 5:00 p.m., a warrior blows into an enormous shell, signaling the start of
the nightly parade, which features colorful floats and dancers in elaborate
costumes, not unlike the massive Carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro.
The Tapati
festival is at once a test of masculine strength and feminine grace celebrating
Polynesian pride.
Easter
Island is at the southernmost point of the so-called Polynesian Triangle — a
Pacific region with Hawaii and New Zealand at the other corners.
The Unesco
World Heritage Site is famous for its nearly 900 massive stone monuments — the
Moai, carved by the Rapa Nui hundreds of years ago.
Rival teams
are locked in an all-out contest to crown a new Tapati queen, who reigns for a
year.
Numerous
races and other contests take place — including reed board surfing, underwater
fishing, fruit-carrying, a triathlon and horse races — but the nightly parades
and dance competitions are the highlight.
Locals
spend months carving out large wooden statues for the parade floats from
Eucalyptus trees representing deified ancestors, such as the mystical Moai
stone giants or the Birdman.
One night,
a man draped in animal skins leads the way on his motorcycle, featuring a
bull’s skull on the steering wheel.
Behind him,
a woman dressed as a mermaid — her costume made of all-natural materials
including a tail taken from a tuna caught just that morning — poses on a float
decorated with huge wooden octopuses.
People
originally from the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia play large pahu
drums, while the Rapa Nui prefer horse jaws that make a light sound close to
maracas when the teeth hit one another.
Some of the
Tapati activities reflect a more Latin vibe taken from Chile — the elderly do
battle to be the accordion king, as young people display their tango skills.
But the
Polynesian dance competitions are fierce.
At the
Hanga Vare Vare, the main festival stage in Hanga Roa, dancers sway sensually
to the Polynesian drum rhythms.
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