Rano Raraku

The Rano Raraku is an extinct volcano, more precisely a cinder cone, with a height up to 150 m on Easter Island. He rises 14.7 km east of Hanga Roa seamlessly from the grassy plain. The south-eastern slope of the conical mountain is locally eroded. The steep scarp is developed in geologically recent period only very briefly by coastal erosion, as the volcano was still gnawed directly from the sea. A later lava flow of Maunga Terevaka changed the coastline, so that the Rano Raraku is now about a mile from the ocean.

The Rano Raraku is the Terevaka the highest elevation of Easter Island, a parasitic volcano. The rock is a porous tuff of yellowish brown color with numerous inclusions. On the slopes of the mountain - especially in the south - are still the stone quarry, from which almost all the stone statues ( moai ) of Easter Island come. Today 397 more or less finished statues stand at half height around the crater rim and on the inner slopes. They are buried up to the shoulder or the chest into the ground.

In the 350 x 280 m measured, oval crater is a freshwater lake, one of the few open waters of Easter Island, the southern and eastern shore is densely covered with totora reeds. On the surface drive one to two meters thick reed mats, which, as can be seen from the comparison of satellite images, are driven by the wind over the sea, so that its surface is constantly changing.

In 1958, one in a pipe system to use the lake for water supply a sheep farm. This measure lowered the water level of today 6-7 m deep lake permanently by about one meter. Today, the island has a central water supply from deep holes, so that a water removal from the crater lakes is no longer necessary.