Some destinations are places of the imagination as much as points on a map. The Pyramids, the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest – they’re the sort of places that inspire you to dream of travel, even before you really know exactly what you’re going to find there. Easter Island is definitely somewhere like that, an inaccessible speck somewhere in the Pacific Ocean dotted with mysterious giant statues that speak of ancient civilisations.
That allure is helping Easter Island become an increasingly popular destination in itself, easily accessible from Chile’s capital city Santiago. And like a lot of these landscapes of the imagination, when you get there you quickly discover that a lot of what you think you know about it is wrong – but the reality is so much more enticing.
Pacific arrival
Easter Island—also known as Rapa Nui, the name given to it by the indigenous islanders—is a tiny island 23 km (14 miles) long (23 km) set into the wide blue Pacific five hours by air from Santiago. That feels like a long way, but gave me the chance to transition from the energy of the capital to the more relaxed vibe of island life. It’s a vibe that hits you the moment you walk down the stairs of the plane onto the tarmac: the airport is a low-strung sort of place, with plenty of tropical greenery and even a moai—one of those iconic big-headed statues—to welcome me. I’d be seeing plenty of those over the next week.
There’s just one town on the island, called Hanga Roa, which is where most travellers stay. Before I headed there I spent a few nights at Explora Rapa Nui, a self-contained luxury lodge perched on a remote hill overlooking the ocean. Explora’s signature brand is always very popular with our Patagonia travellers, so it was great to have that sense of familiarity carried over even when I was a long way from the snows of the Andes mountains.
Explora’s great selling point is the wide variety of excursions on offer. All of the island is a national park, so although it’s small and easily navigated, you need a guide to see all the sites apart from Hanga Roa and the beaches. Explora lets you pack in as much as you want, with the added bonus of offering a choice of gentle or active versions of each excursion. If you’ve still got your hiking boots with you after time in Patagonia, it’s a nice twist to be able to turn a visit to a heritage site into a long walk with some culture at the end.
Understanding the moai
Culture and history are definitely more foregrounded on Easter Island than in many other destinations: there’s a reason why a moai is one of the first things to greet you when you arrive at the airport. Before Rapa Nui was ever a tourist destination, it was these carved wonders that drew the attention of archaeologists and anthropologists.
You probably know a pop culture version of their story. Early Polynesians came to the island and erected these giant heads to either their ancestors or gods, then drove their entire culture into ecological suicide by cutting down the forest that once covered the island. By the time the first European explorers arrived here, there were barely any of the original Rapa Nui islands to explain their story – let alone any trees that once sheltered the forest gardens common across the Pacific, or whose logs were used to move the giant moai into place.
All of that was thrown comprehensively out of the window on my first day. My guides explained how new research has shown that there never was any ecological or population crash. Rapa Nui’s trees had indeed disappeared shortly after the first people arrived (invasive species introduced at the same time were as important culprits at preventing new seedlings taking shoot as much as trees being chopped down), but in response, the islanders developed a sophisticated food culture of water-retaining rock gardens.
As for the moai, these statues weighing an average 12 tonnes literally walked themselves into position after being carved in their quarries – just as indigenous oral traditions always insisted. Modern reconstructions have shown how teams with just three ropes can create a rocking motion that looks like a statue leaning forward and swinging its hips to propel itself along. The physics of the whole affair felt unfathomable to me when explained, but the videos of the walking statues show that the Rapa Nui people were sophisticated engineers who knew exactly what they were doing.
Touring the highlights of Easter Island
Due to its compact size, it’s possible to tour Easter Island’s main attractions in just a few days. Most people stay four nights—which is what I did—but it’s worth adding in an extra night if your time and budget allows, so you can enjoy a beach day at the end. If you take less than four nights you’ll probably find your time goes too quickly given the flight to get here.
The place that was top of my list was Ahu Tongariki, also known as ‘The 15’. As the name suggests, there are 15 enormous moai statues here, all mounted in row on a ceremonial stone platform called an ahu. It’s the largest collection of moai on the island, and they make a truly dramatic line up with their backs against the Pacific horizon. As they’re on the eastern side of the island, my tip is to set an alarm to see them at sunrise – they look truly glorious with the gold light rising out of the water behind them.
The moai here—like all the others on the island—were all once toppled, and then re-erected in modern times. I got a much clearer picture of the process of how the first Rapa Nui people would have lived with them at Rano Raraku, not far from Ahu Tongariki. This is the quarry of volcanic tuff that the statues were carved from. There were half-finished moai lying in the grass or buried up to their necks – it felt like proper living history, as if the workers had just downed tools and abandoned their work. And just like it had boggled me to think of the moai walking with just a few simple ropes, the labour involved in chiselling them out of the rock without metal tools was astounding.
Next up were the sites on the western side of the island near Hanga Roa – the crater of Rano Kau. This is Easter Island’s most epic landscape – a collapsed giant crater full of endemic plant and animal species, with a steep wall on one side and views out to the ocean on the other. Most people drive up to the lookout point, but I enjoyed the three hour hike up to the far edge of the crater and around its rim, which is great for more active travelers. Explora dubs this excursion ‘the Birdman’, for Rapa Nui’s greatest cultural event.
In the 18th century during the colonial period, the islanders founded the Birdman cult linked to the chief god Makemake. Every year, competitors would swim out to a nearby island to ritually harvest the first egg of the season from the sooty terns that nest there, before returning to climb the cliff of the crater to the ceremonial village of Orongo there. The winner’s clan were given sole rights to harvest eggs from the island for the remainder of the year. My guide pointed out the birdman carvings at Orongo, but looking down over the cliffs I was happy just to have done the hike and skip the egg reward.
The west coast also has its moai, especially at Ahu Tahai. I walked there from Nayara, an all-inclusive with a fantastic spa that’s located in Hanga Roa – being in town made it easy to explore without a guide. Just as Ahu Tongariki is great for sunrise, Ahu Tahai is the place to be for sunset, with the sun dipping into the sea behind the moai. There are also caves near here to be explored – strange volcanic lava tubes that need a torch and a safety hat, though claustrophobes might prefer to stick to the ocean air.
Finally, there is the beach at Anakena. After all, can you really say you’ve been to a Pacific island unless you laze in a sandy cove under some swaying palm trees? Like Ahu Tahai, this is the only other spot where you go without a guide. I rented an ATV to get here (it’s hard to get lost when there’s only one road in and out) to relax for a few hours by myself. There was snorkelling too as another option— a great way to see the island from the water—but after a few days taking in all the culture on Rapa Nui, I wanted to process everything the island had shown me.
A handful of moai looked down at me as I laid on the beach, but I felt like one of their giant companions back in the quarry – in need of rest. I put my head on the sand and let the sound of the Pacific soothe me like a lullaby.
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