Similar to all tourist destinations, Easter Island was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic hard. However, the recovery has been speedy. Expect many tourists, and book your accommodation well in advance, especially if you arrive during the peak in early February. This Easter Island travel guide has the following sections:
- Why Visit
- Brief History of Easter Island
- Easter Island in Numbers
- Covid-19 Restrictions
- Visas
- Other Arrival Requirements
- National Park Tickets
- National Park Guide
- When to Visit
- Safety
- Top 5 Things to Do in Easter Island
- Transportation
- Accommodation
- Food
- Internet
- Overall Tips
- Costs
- Easter Island Overall Rating
Why Visit
Who does NOT want to visit Easter Island?
One of the most remote places on earth. 2,250km away from the closest inhabited island of Pitcairn. 3,752km to Santiago on the Chile mainland. 6,921km to New Zealand. 14,300km to Fukuoka in Japan.
Secondly, everybody has probably seen the Easter Island statues on TV or in books If you watched it as a small child, it might have become one of the items on the lifetime bucket list, similar to the Kyoto temples in Japan, pyramids in Egypt or Machu Picchu in Peru.
Given its importance, the Rapa Nui National Park on Easter Island is a UNESCO Heritage site:
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/715/
Not only moai
Easter Island is home to the unique moai, the intriguing monolithic stone statues, which made the island world famous. You can view them still neatly standing at Ahu Tongariki, fifteen of them peering into the distance.
Only 23km at longest stretch, the island is triangular with the extinct volcanoes protruding from each corner. You can hike to the largest volcano Rano Kau and will be rewarded with nice views of its collapsed caldera against the blue ocean backdrop.
And the language is exotic and melodic. The original people called themselves Rapa Nui, the moai statues standing on their ahu. Even the Spanish name “Isla de Pascua” sounds nice.
It will leave a mark and you will want to return.
Brief history of Easter Island
No Easter Island travel guide should skip the history of the enigmatic Rapa Nui. According to the current estimates, the original inhabitants of Easter Island arrived from Polynesia around 800-1200AD. They have created a thriving and industrious culture, which was able to construct the enormous moai. However, by 1722 the Rapa Nui population was estimated at only 2-3,000.
Let’s think about this for a second. Not millions or hundreds of thousand of people, but a tiny society on a tiny island was able to design, construct, transport and erect those stone mammoths. Pretty impressive.
The first recorded European to visit was a Dutch naval commander Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Sunday in 1722. Similar to the approach in other places (e.g., Christmas Island, Ascension Island), Rapa Nui was then named “Easter Island”.
Commodore Roggeveen spent only one day on the island, but recorded the presence of the “particularly high erected stone images”. 52 years later the famous British Captain Cook (of the HMS Endeavour fame) stopped by the island to cure the scurvy among his crew. He also recorded the existence of the “stupendous figures”. However, many of the statues were already on the ground.
By 1825 all of the moai had been destroyed.
So what happened?
Interestingly, if all the moai had been toppled, it probably means that no single clan won the long and brutal war. Otherwise, their statues would have survived intact.
In other words, similar to many other conflicts in the human history, there were only losers coming out of this war.
But what might have caused the war in the first place?
The current scientific consensus is that the land clearing for cultivation and the excessive resources dedicated to the moai construction led to hunger and tribal infighting for the scarce resources. In addition, the European slave traders and the introduction of TB and smallpox reduced the population to 111 by 1877.
Critically, because Rapa Nui has not had any written history, a crucial part of the island’s culture and collective memory was lost. The last ariki henua (main chief) and moari (keepers of sacred secrets) perished without passing their centuries-old knowledge to the next generation.
Chile annexed the depleted Easter Island in 1888. Since then Rapa Nui has been a special territory (“territorio especial”) and part of the Valparaiso region.
But what are moai?
Those statues were carved by the Polynesian colonizers between 1250 and 1500.
Strangely, all moai have large oversized heads making 3/8 of their overall size. What is the reason for that? The scientific consensus is that the statues are living faces (aringa ora) of deified ancestors (aringa ora ata tepuna).
They are similar to their Polynesian counterparts with large heads, large broad noses, oblong ears, heavy torso and indistinct legs. Almost all of them have been carved in the Rano Raraku quarry and are made of the volcanic ash.
4 giraffes stacked on top of each other
There are on average 4m (13ft) high with a weight of 13 tonnes each. They are truly massive. The tallest moai, called Paro, was 10m (33ft) high and weighed 82 tonnes. One unfinished sculpture in Rano Raraku is 21m (69ft) weighing about 150 tonnes.
But what is 21m in real life beyond the moai in this Easter island travel guide?
In the U.S. this is more than the distance between the baseball home plate and the pitcher’s mound.
Among the living creatures, the tallest land animal on our planet is a giraffe in Africa at around 16 feet (5m) tall. In other words, you would have to stack 4 giraffes on top of each other.
Finally, most U.S. two-story homes (ground floor and first floor to the Europeans) are approximately 17 feet (5m) tall. So this largest moai would be again 4 average two-story houses stacked vertically.
Pretty incredible.
900+
In total, there are approximately 900 moai, out of which a staggering 394 are still in Rano Raraku in various stages of completion. Let’s think about this for a second. Rapa Nui must have worked on many statues at the same time. Secondly, they also must have abandoned completion of some in favor of the others.
So who made it to completion and the coveted space on the ahu platform?
Archeologists believe the statues represent the ancient Polynesian ancestors. They were symbols of power and authority, both political and religious. In addition, they were believed to preserve the sacred spirit or mana indispensable in daily life. In the Polynesian mythology, mana is the a supernatural power of force and energy. The more mana, the better your everyday life.
You will notice that most moai face away from the ocean. They are watching inland and protecting their people. The exception is the seven statues on Ahu Akivi facing the sea to help sailors find the island.
And for this protection, the ancient Rapa Nui were willing to spend an enormous amount of time and resources to build, transport and erect those monoliths.
Enter competing clans
They were also ancestors of the individual clans protecting their own. This might explain the sheer number of the sculptures. Secondly, in the clan infighting in the 18th and 19th century when the European ships started visiting, the moai protectors of the opposing families were toppled. They would no longer be able to offer the sacred spirit and protection to their families.
In the time-honored tradition of megalomania across thousands of years (e.g., pyramids in Egypt, Mayan temples in Tikal, Angkor Wat in Laos), bigger moai were considered to have more mana and be more powerful. Consequently, the larger the mana of the moai on the ahu platform, the more mana for the chief who had commissioned the sculpture.
Finally, mana was believed to reside in moai’s hair. Therefore, some statues have a cylinder on top of their heads symbolizing the topknot with the sacred energy. Archeologists believe that it was painted red, which is still the sacred color in some communities in Polynesia. This cylinder is made from a light rock, but it is still heavy.
How were they constructed?
No matter how we look at them, moai were expensive to construct, transport and erect on their platform. Archeologists believe that a distinguished group of professional carvers with a high status in the community conducted the work. Also, the Rano Raraku quarry was divided among various clans each working on their sculptures.
In the quarry you will be able to see many sculptures not finished. They were chiselled out of the rock face until they were attached to it by a thin keel along their spine.
Once completely detached and further processed (eyes, smoothing, coloring), they were transported to their ahu platform.
How were they transported?
Nobody really knows. But the consensus bet is that they were travelling on wooden sledges or on top of rollers. This might explain the oral tradition talking about the statues “walking across the island” to their platform.
In other words, a similar technology supposedly used by the Egyptians in transportation of the stone blocks for the pyramids. Although nobody knows for sure either, how they did it in detail.
Final step: erect it
So let’s imagine the statue was transported intact without any major damage, which was probably a big assumption in the first place. How to erect it? And secondly, how to erect it without causing any damage in the process?
In 1955 Thor Heyerdahl, a colorful Norwegian adventurer criss-crossing oceans in papyrus boats, challenged the island’s mayor to raise a fallen 25 tonne sculpture at Anakena beach. 18 days later 12 islanders did raise the fallen structure by using two levers and placing layers of stones under the statue as it was being tilted. Finally it slid into its place on the platform.
The final engineering thought for the impressive moai masters from approximately 800-1200 years ago. The (red) stone cylinder symbolizing the topknot on their heads. Assuming they had no modern cranes, how did they raise and put it on the moai head at precisely the right place?
Which also begs the question, how did they measure and confirm the balance of the moai in the first place, so that the prized topknot does not fall down? All this for some topknots which are 2m in diameter and weigh 11 tons.
Correct, nobody knows that for sure either.
One recent hypothesis is that the Rapa Nui used a ramp and a rope technique. They might have built an upward-going ramp with a moai leaning toward it at the end. Then they would roll the round hats until the statue, where the hat would be placed on the statue. Finally, the would tip the moai upright.
The end is near
Suddenly, around the time of the arrival of the first Europeans in the eighteenth century, this delicate clan-based society collapsed. Carvers abandoned their tools at the Rano Raraku quarry abruptly. Many obsidian weapons were manufactured suddenly. Archeologists found remains of skulls with violent cracks. Caves were used as refuge places at that time. Oral tradition is also talking about cannibalism during this troubled period.
However, the most apparent evidence are the fallen moai across the island. The warring families toppled hundreds of statues trying to desecrate each other’s sacred places. That would remove their mana protecting their families.
Scary stuff.
How did this happen?
Many sophisticated civilizations collapsed over the centuries (e.g., Mayan in central America, Khmer in Asia). Also in Easter Island archeologists believe that the collapse was due to the overexploitation of the island in quest to build ever more moai at the expense of the daily survival.
In a society that small spending such a significant amount of scarce resources on creating more sculptures de-forested the island, so impairing the critical ocean fishing and agriculture. This might have occurred at the time of a weather change led to prolonged hunger. All families were desperate to capture scarce food, arable land and shelter.
And faced with a threat to their very survival, the clans did what we humans usually do in such circumstances.
They started a war.
Easter Island in Numbers
Population: 8,000
Capital: Hanga Roa
Language: Rapa Nui and Spanish
Currency: Chilean peso (CLP)
Exchange rate (November 2022): USD 1 = CLP 919, EUR 1 = CLP 919, GBP 1 = 1054
Electricity: standard European 230V with 50Hz frequency, standard European plugs
Covid-19 Restrictions
Restrictive. You have to take a PCR test with a negative result within 48 hours of boarding your flight in Santiago to Hanga Roa.
On 1 October 2022 the Chilean government eliminated all Covid restrictions (vaccination passes, face masks and mobility passes).
However, this does NOT apply to the Easter Island as of today.
This Easter Island travel guide recommends checking the Covid-19 restrictions before your departure. As we have all learned during 2020 and 2021, they have been changing quickly. Nobody wants to have any problems when boarding your flight in Santiago.
Visas
Because Easter Island is part of Chile, citizens of USA, EU, Canada, Australia, and Japan do not need a visa to enter.
Chinese passport holders need to apply for a visa at the local Chile embassy.
Other Arrival Requirements
Similar to other countries living off tourism, Rapa Nui has additional arrival requirements. They are designed to protect the island, and generate employment and revenue for the local population. This is similar to mainland Chile.
You will pay for three main things: (1) SERNATUR-registered lodging, (2) National Park tickets and (3) a National Park guide.
SERNATUR-registered accommodation
BEFORE boarding a plane in Santiago, you must show a proof of a lodging booking in Rapa Nui. All accommodations on the island are required to register with SERNATUR, so you will automatically comply with that.
National Park Tickets
All non-residents must buy a national park ticket to enter the archeological sites. It is valid for 10 days. Secondly, you can enter Rano Raraku and Orongo only ONCE per ticket. No limit on other sites at present. Similar to mainland Chile, there is a two tier system, where foreigners pay 3.5 times more than Chileans.
Current prices:.
- Non-Chilean adult: CLP 72,000 ($68)
- Non-Chilean child: CLP 36,000 ($34)
- 0-6 years: free
You can buy tickets at the airport, online (site is only in Spanish) or in the central market in Hanga Roa town center.
At the airport the National Park booth is after the luggage claim but before the arrival hall.
In central Hanga Roa you can buy the ticket at the Ma’u Henua Indigenous Community Central Office.
National Park opening hours:
- Summer: 09:00 – 20:00
- Winter: 09:00 – 18:00
National Park Guide
In addition, you will have to have a licensed National Park guide. Yes, they introduce the history and help protect the sites (who wants to see some lame graffiti scribbled on a moai?). However, it is also an employment- and revenue-generating program for the local population.
You can satisfy this guide requirement in two ways. Firstly, join a tour group. Secondly, hire your own guide. Neither is cheap as everybody knows you will have to pay and there is no way around it.
A six-hour tour of the island, which covers all sites, is approximately CLP 130,000-200,000 ($123-190) per person. This might be the whole island, or just the northern or southern side as described below under Itinerary.
When to Visit
The weather on Easter Island is pleasant year round with average temperatures of 64-73F (18-23C). Late January and early February are the most popular due to the annual Tapati Rapa Nui festival.
Beyond the weather, please consider the cruise ships schedule. Similar to other locations (Venice, Split) they regularly send crowds to the shore. Those are usually day tourists who will clog the main sites on Rapa Nui as well.
Cruise ships are regularly docking at Rapa Nui and you can find their schedule on the web.
Safety
This chapter in the Easter island travel guide is easy.
Given Easter Island completely relies on tourism, violent crimes against tourists are unheard of.
As a hotel owner in Zimbabwe eloquently said “You do not shoot walking dollars”.
Top 5 Things in Easter Island
Given the small size, you will see all the main sights within two full days. However, given it is expensive to get here, you might as well stay for another one or days and take it easy. The island is remote, the air unpolluted and clear, and the ocean views in every direction magnificent.
(1) Visit the Rano Raraku quarry and the Ahu Tongariki close nearby
This is my favorite. Rano Raraku is located on a low hill with many moai in the ground or still unfinished in the quarry. Then it is a great short walk to the 15 statues on the Ahu Tongariki
(2) Hike the Rano Kau volcano and the neighboring Orongo
Having seen all the moai, it is is a picturesque easy hike to the volcano. The caldera collapsed creating a nice view to the ocean.
(3) Sit on the Anakena beach and peer in the direction of Maccu Pichu in Peru
(4) Return to Hanga Roa along the southern shore through Akahanga, Vaihu and Vinapu
(5) See the sunrise on the beach with a moai in Hanga Roa
Itinerary
This itinerary will take at least 7 hours, and more if you want to stay longer in individual sites or walk some sections.
Except the volcanos, the island is flat so easy walking.
Many tour companies or individual guides will want you to split this around-the-island tour into two separate ones done on two days. This is also an excellent idea, especially if you do it with different guides to hear their take on the history and culture.
However, as you would expect, the cost will be approximately twice.
Standard loop with extension
This is a standard itinerary that all whole-day tours are following.
A loop with an extension to the Rano Kau volcano and Orongo in the south. You have a choice in this extension.
You can either start or finish at Rano Kau, some do it for the sunrise. Or you can finish the tour around sunset which will be nice as well. But if your time allows, probably the best option is to go to Orogno and Rano Kau on another day.
Finally, the tour companies and individual guides split the loop into the northern and southern routes on separate days. They backtrack on the same way to Hanga Roa.
In addition to the tour(s), please also just walk around the island. Those are easy hikes with firm and flat surface with no mud, aggressive insects or potholes. The views are pretty spectacular and outside of the main tourist sites, there is usually nobody around.
Transportation
Flying to Easter Island
Ouch, there is no way around. Getting to the Easter Island is a pain.
Yes, this is the reason why there are not so many visitors. But it is not much of a consolation to your body when you are sitting in a cramped airplane seat for 18 hours straight.
Secondly, the Chilean airline LATAM has a total monopoly on the flights from Chile to the Easter Island. In other words, we are at their mercy when they fly and at what cost ($1700 from New York is considered a “bargain” according to the online alerts).
Oneworld frequent flyer miles?
As LATAM is part of the oneworld alliance with American and British, you can try to use your frequent flyer miles. Two thoughts based on our experience, given there is no competition on this route. Firstly, you will need a lot of miles. Secondly, LATAM sometimes just refuses to sell for miles and cash is the only way to book your seat.
Again, if flying directly from the U.S. or Europe with no overnight stay in Santiago (SCL), just get ready that getting there will take a long, long time. There is little reason to check the clock because it still will be hours away. Just hunker down and accept it. This aluminium tube with two engines attached will get there at one point of time in the future.
But then a miracle happens. Everybody is visibly upbeat when the plane is already descending for the touch down.
Ground transport
Given the island size, you will rely on a tour vehicle, a rental car and walking.
If arriving at the peak early February, book a rental car in advance. There will be crowds for the Tapati Rapa Nui festival.
Easter Island has only one town, Hanga Roa.
Hiking (favorite of this Easter Island travel guide)
The island is small and flat with spectacular views pretty much in every direction you look. The weather is moderate with no excessive sunshine or rainy season as in the south-eastern Asia.
Accommodation
Given the constant tourist numbers, a broad range is available. A private room is $70-150 and up. Few budget options but they do exist.
All lodging is located in or around Hanga Roa.
The usual accommodation booking sites cover Easter Island.
Food (favorite topic in this Easter Island travel guide)
As you might expect on this tiny island, seafood is abundant and excellent. A special mention goes to Tuna Ahi cooked over red-hot volcanic stones near the shoreline. Tuna ceviche is also amazing.
And do not forget the empanadas piping hot straight from the oven in a panaderia.
Internet
Wifi available in hotels and homestays, speeds can vary.
Overall Tips
This Easter Island travel guide learned it the hard way to bring enough cash. Do not make the same mistake as we did.
(1) Bring cash. USD is widely accepted on the island. Caution: at different exchange rates. Check the USD to CLP rate on your arrival to avoid scams.
(2) We are aware of three ATMs on Rapa Nui. One at the airport (opens two hours before the plane arrives and closes when plane departs). Banco Santander and Banco Estado in Hanga Roa have one each, both working 24/7.
(3) Bigger restaurants and shops accept credit cards.
(4) Tap water is chlorinated. Drink filtered or bottled water if you have a sensitive stomach.
Costs
Given everything has to be imported from the Chilean mainland, everything on the Easter island is expensive. Food, accommodation, car rental, gas.
Fresh fruit and vegetables can cost 3-5 times more than on Chile mainland.
Restaurant prices will be similar to the US or Europe.
Easter Island Overall Rating
Highly recommended, probably a once in a life time experience for most of us.
Far away, but those moai in this remote setting do make an impression.
Other countries?
Beyond this Easter Island travel guide, you might like another another enigmatic site Göbekli Tepe in Turkey (Sanliurfa and Göbekli tepe (11,000 years old!)). Allegedly 11,000 years old, which makes it much older than the Egyptian pyramids or Stonehenge in the United Kingdom.
In addition, another unique Greek monument close nearby is Guide to Nemrut Dagi, Turkey (2022).
And when you are in the neighborhood, you might also like Uzbekistan with its magnificent Bukhara and Samarkand. Also representing the peak achievements of another culture, they are merely 9,700 kms or 6,000 miles away from Rapa Nui.
Other excellent historical venues is Tikal, Guatemala, for the stunning Mayan pyramids in the jungle. Or across the border, Copan Ruinas in Honduras.
No Crowds?
In addition to this Easter Island travel guide, this website cares deeply about avoiding excessive crowds. The list of tips learned through our travels is here Avoid Crowds When Travelling – Top 21 Tips (2022).
