Things to do

Tongariki is so well placed with dramatic cliffs in the background and the statues are so huge and austere that the feeling of some extraterrestrial involvement relentlessly creeps in. Only the top sections of the statues (a hairdo or a hat is up to your imagination) are two meters high. The complex contains fifteen pieces – a record on the island. The story goes (or at least on version of the many story metamorphosis) that the locals fell into despair and initiated a civil war. As a result they started toppling the statues being representatives of the ancestors of the warring clans. At the same time, Tongariki apparently stood firm until the 60s of the XX century when a tsunami hit it scattering the precious ancestral incarnations all over the bay. Something does not quite add up. Still, there is history and there are historians.