🇨🇱 Chile · Patagonia and the islands
Few places in the world stir as much fascination as Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, its name in the local Polynesian language. In the immensity of the Pacific, thousands of kilometers from any other inhabited land, this small volcanic island holds one of humanity's great mysteries and achievements: the moai, the colossal stone statues carved by the Rapanui, which for centuries watched over the coast with their enigmatic faces. Standing before them, in the silence of the Pacific, is an experience that shakes you.
But Rapa Nui is far more than its moai. It's an island of volcanic landscapes, craters holding lagoons, cliffs battered by the sea, pink-sand beaches like Anakena and a spectacular night sky. It's the quarry of Rano Raraku, where hundreds of moai were left half-carved, as if frozen in time; it's the imposing Ahu Tongariki, with its fifteen giants lined up facing the sunrise; it's the Rano Kau crater and the ceremonial village of Orongo, cradle of the birdman cult (tangata manu). And above all it's a living people: the Rapanui, heirs of those Polynesian navigators, who keep their language, their music, their dances and their traditions.
This guide covers Easter Island with a practical, warm eye: how to get there (only by plane from Santiago), how admission to Rapa Nui National Park works, which archaeological sites not to miss, how to get around the island, where to sleep and eat, and how to visit with the respect owed to a place that is at once a World Heritage Site and the home of an ancestral people. Getting here is a long and special journey, but the reward is one of the most unique and unforgettable destinations on Earth.
Easter Island was settled centuries ago by Polynesian navigators who arrived in canoes after one of the greatest feats of seafaring in history, crossing thousands of kilometers of open ocean. Tradition credits the arrival to the legendary king Hotu Matu'a. Isolated from the rest of the world, the Rapanui developed an extraordinary and unique culture whose supreme symbol is the moai: enormous stone statues representing deified ancestors, raised on ceremonial platforms called ahu. In time, for reasons still debated — pressure on resources, deforestation, conflict between clans and, later, external factors — Rapanui society entered a crisis and many moai were toppled. A new cult then arose, that of the birdman (tangata manu), centered on the village of Orongo. The European name 'Easter Island' was given by the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen, who arrived on Easter Sunday 1722. The 19th century was tragic: Peruvian slave raids and epidemics drastically reduced the Rapanui population. In 1888 Chile annexed the island. Today Rapa Nui is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1995) and a people fighting to preserve its language and its identity. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Chile's great port and its coastal playground: the hills and funiculars of Valparaíso, a World Heritage Site; Viña del Mar, the 'Garden City'; Neruda's houses; the vineyards of Casablanca; and the remote islands of Juan Fernández and Rapa Nui.
Read the history of Valparaíso Region →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The story of Rapa Nui begins with one of humanity's greatest feats of navigation. Centuries ago, Polynesian navigators set out from somewhere in the vast Pacific — probably from the islands of eastern Polynesia — and, guided by the stars, the currents, the flight of birds and the swell, crossed thousands of kilometers of open ocean in double canoes to reach this tiny volcanic island lost in the immensity, one of the most remote inhabited places on the planet. Getting here without modern instruments was an extraordinary achievement.
Rapanui oral tradition credits the settlement to King Hotu Matu'a, held to be the first ariki (king or paramount chief) and the founder of the people. According to the account, Hotu Matu'a arrived with his people from a homeland called Hiva, coming ashore at Anakena beach on the north coast, which is why it is a mythical place for the Rapanui. The first settlers established themselves there, multiplying over time and organizing into clans (mata) spread across the island.
Isolated from the rest of the world for centuries, the Rapanui developed a culture of their own, immensely rich and singular, with their language, their social organization, their religion founded on ancestor worship and a body of remarkable knowledge. From that people of navigators would come one of the most impressive and enigmatic artistic and ritual expressions in history: the moai.
The moai are the symbol of Rapa Nui and one of the most impressive and enigmatic creations of any culture in the world. They are enormous monolithic statues carved from volcanic stone, representing important ancestors — chiefs, priests or deified figures — and raised on ceremonial platforms called ahu, usually on the coast. Most moai face inland, 'watching over' the villages and channeling the mana (spiritual power) of the ancestors to their descendants.
The scale of the undertaking was colossal. Nearly all the moai were carved in the quarry of the Rano Raraku volcano, whose volcanic tuff was relatively easy to work. Once sculpted, they had to be moved — some weigh dozens of tons — over kilometers to the ahu, and then raised. How they shifted these masses without wheels or draft animals is one of the great questions: tradition says the moai 'walked', and modern studies have shown they could be moved by rocking them from side to side with ropes, in an upright position. Many were crowned with a pukao, a large red scoria topknot or headdress, and fitted with eyes of white coral and obsidian, which gave them 'life' and a gaze.
The construction of moai, ever larger and more numerous, reflects a complex society organized into clans competing for prestige. This flowering of the moai cult lasted several centuries and left hundreds of statues scattered across the island, in one of the most extraordinary archaeological ensembles on the planet.
At some point in its history, Rapanui society entered a deep crisis. Moai stopped being carved and raised, many were toppled from their platforms, and the island's culture changed radically. For a long time the dominant explanation was 'ecocide' or ecological self-destruction: on this reading, popularized in widely read books, a growing population and the carving and hauling of moai caused massive deforestation (the island, originally forested, was left almost treeless), which ruined resources, triggered famine and wars between clans and led to the collapse of society, including the toppling of the moai during those conflicts.
Recent research, however, has increasingly qualified and challenged that view. Various studies argue that the fall in population and the transformation of society were more gradual and complex than the idea of a sudden 'collapse' suggests, and that the Rapanui developed strategies to adapt to a difficult environment. Today many specialists stress that the decisive factor in the demographic catastrophe was not so much ecological suicide as the later external impact: contact with Europeans, introduced disease and, above all, the 19th-century slave raids.
In the midst of that transformation a new religious and political order emerged: the birdman cult (tangata manu), which displaced the moai cult and moved the center of ritual power to the village of Orongo, on the rim of the Rano Kau crater. The toppling of the moai was, in any case, the visible sign that a world — that of the great statues — had come to an end.
The first documented contact with Europeans came on 5 April 1722, when the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen sighted the island. As that day was Easter Sunday, he named it 'Paasch-Eyland', that is, 'Easter Island', the name by which much of the world knows it. Roggeveen was followed through the 18th century by other European visitors, such as the Spaniard Felipe González de Ahedo (who claimed the island for Spain in 1770) and the Briton James Cook (1774), whose accounts describe the state of the moai and of Rapanui society.
The 19th century brought the greatest tragedy in Rapa Nui's history. During the 1860s the island suffered devastating Peruvian slave raids: expeditions that abducted a large part of the population — chiefs, sages and keepers of traditional knowledge among them — to work in inhuman conditions in Peru (on the guano islands, for instance). Although international pressure forced the repatriation of some, many died, and the few who returned brought epidemics with them, smallpox above all, which swept through the inhabitants left on the island.
The result was catastrophic: the Rapanui population fell drastically, reduced to a few hundred people, in one of the most severe demographic disasters caused by colonial contact. With that massive loss of life went much of the memory, the language and the ancestral knowledge. The later introduction of sheep ranching and conversion to Christianity, brought by missionaries, completed the profound transformation of the survivors' lives.
In 1888 Easter Island was annexed to Chile through an agreement between the Chilean state, represented by Captain Policarpo Toro, and the Rapanui chiefs. From then on the island formed part of Chilean territory, though for many decades the situation of its inhabitants was very hard: much of the island was leased to a sheep ranching company, the Rapanui lived under severe restrictions — largely confined to the Hanga Roa area — and it took a long time for them to obtain full rights as Chilean citizens, something only consolidated over the course of the 20th century.
In time the situation changed. The Rapanui gained citizenship and civil rights, administration and services developed, and the island opened to the world, especially after the airport was built and regular flights began, which drove tourism. Recognition of the universal value of its heritage came in 1995, when UNESCO declared Rapa Nui National Park a World Heritage Site, enshrining the island and its moai as a treasure belonging to all humanity.
Today Rapa Nui is at once a world-famous tourist destination and the home of a living people fighting to preserve and revitalize its identity: its language (Rapanui, of Polynesian root), its music, its dances, its traditions and its great cultural festival, the Tapati Rapa Nui. In recent decades the community has taken a larger role in managing its heritage — including co-administration of the national park — and measures have been driven forward to protect the island's fragile environment and regulate tourism. The story of Rapa Nui is thus the story of a people who survived catastrophe and who keep the memory of their extraordinary ancestors alight.