Easter Island is an interesting and breathtaking destination in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is often referred to as the most isolated inhabited island in the world. With the majestic quality of being stranded on an island,
now picture all the mysterious monolithic heads scattered all over the island. The history of this fascinating culture unwinds on a 4 day Chile adventure trip to the magical and wondrous Easter Island.
Easter Island became an annex of Chile in 1888. The official count of statues on the island is 887 and the island is a World Heritage site. A lot of the island is protected from development because it is within the boundaries of Rapa Nui National Park. There are very few of the original indigenous islanders left on the island because of disease and slave raiding that took place in the 1800’s when European colonizers first arrived on the island.
The name Easter Island comes from the Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggeveen, who discovered the island on Easter Sunday in 1722. In Spanish, the official name is Isla de Pascua translated Easter Island in English. The Polynesian name of the island is Rapa Nui or Big Rapa. It was given this name by the locals because of the islands resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group.
No one is certain what the original name for the island was, since there are no surviving members. Much speculation however has led to several hypotheses. Some think it was Te pito or te henua, which mean “navel of the land” or “ends of the land” respectively. Considering the likely condition of the first seafarers who landed on the island 1200 years ago, after floating at sea for who knows how long, these are likely possibilities.
The large indigenous statues are called Moais. A fully intact statue sits on a large based called an ahu and has a wooden topknot on its head. The island is a lush and verdant volcanic landscape with craters and mountains and lagoons surrounded in every direction by vast expansive Pacific seas.
There are tours to visit the island or you may want to rent a car which will give you more freedom and mobility on the island. A tour to the eastern part of the island will visit Ahu Tahai which is a site with many large ahu’s which were the huge bases that were built to support the statues. You can also visit the nearby Hanga Roa, where you will see your first Easter Island Moai. It is really a remarkable site to see these statues in person after seeing so many pictures of them. It brings a thousand questions into your head. Why and how were they built? Who were they built for? Seeing them in person and with a professional guide explaining the histories archeologists have pieced together, the story unwinds, and some of the questions, though not all of them are answered.
A full-day excursion will visit Ahu Vaihu, where eight statues lie flat on the ground. In Ahu Akahanga, there is another sad site as you look upon more rows of fallen moai littered about the ground.
These are just some of the exciting adventures awaiting you at the doorstep of your Chile vacation to Easter Island. This vacation is a sure bet. Don’t keep putting it off.
