Easter Island Region Guide

Rapa Nui is the most isolated inhabited place on earth, and it is covered in nearly a thousand carved stone figures that a few thousand people made with stone tools.

The nearest inhabited land is Pitcairn, over 2,000 kilometres away; the South American mainland is 3,700. Polynesian voyagers found it anyway, and over four or five centuries carved the moai — ancestor figures up to ten metres tall — from the volcanic tuff of a single crater and moved them, somehow, across the island.

Rano Raraku, the quarry, still holds almost 400 of them, finished, half-finished and abandoned in the rock.

Beyond the archaeology there is a small island of grassy volcanic cones, cliffs, caves and one good beach, and a living Rapa Nui culture that has come back from near extinction.

Rano Raraku

The quarry, and the most extraordinary place on the island. Nearly 400 moai remain here — standing in the slope up to their shoulders in accumulated soil, lying finished awaiting transport, and still attached to the bedrock at every stage of carving, including one 21 metres long that was never freed.

Ahu Tongariki

Fifteen moai standing on the largest platform on the island, backed by the sea and the quarry. Re-erected in the 1990s after a tsunami scattered them. Sunrise here is the island’s set piece.

Orongo

A ceremonial village of stone houses on the rim of the Rano Kau crater, where the birdman competition was decided, with petroglyphs and a 300-metre drop to the sea.

Anakena

The island’s coral-sand beach with palms and a row of moai behind it, and by tradition where the first settlers landed.

Elsewhere

Ahu Akivi’s seven statues facing the sea; Puna Pau, where the red topknots were quarried; the caves at Ana Kakenga; and the petroglyph field at Papa Vaka.

Rapa Nui is Chilean territory with a Polynesian culture, and the tension in that sentence is the island’s central fact.

Survival

The population fell to 111 people in 1877 after Peruvian slave raids, introduced disease and the loss of almost the entire traditional leadership and priesthood. Everything that survives culturally was carried through by that handful of people, which is why the revival since the 1960s matters so much locally.

Language and identity

The Rapa Nui language is being actively taught and used, the traditional dance and body-painting traditions have been rebuilt, and islanders identify as Polynesian first.

Politics

The island was annexed by Chile in 1888 and run as a sheep ranch, with islanders confined to Hanga Roa and denied citizenship until 1966. Land claims, immigration controls and self-government are live issues, and a 2018 law now limits how long non-residents can stay.

Small-island life

Around 8,000 people live here, everyone is related to everyone, and the pace is unhurried in a way that catches visitors out.

The whole island is a national park and a UNESCO site, co-managed by the Rapa Nui community since 2016. A park ticket is required, it is checked, and the rules are not decorative.

Never touch or climb on a moai or an ahu. The platforms are burial sites and the statues are ancestors, not sculpture. People have been fined, deported and prosecuted for standing on them, and damage to the soft tuff is permanent.

Stay on marked paths, particularly at Rano Raraku, where the ground itself holds buried statues and archaeology.

Take nothing, including stones. Mail arrives at the museum every year from people returning rocks they took.

Everything is imported, from water to fuel, and waste is a genuine problem on an island this small. Refill bottles, refuse packaging, and take what you can back with you.

Use Rapa Nui guides — it is now required at most sites, and it is the right way round.

October to April is the warmer half of the year, with sea temperatures comfortable for swimming and diving and the best chance of settled weather.

Early February brings Tapati Rapa Nui, the island’s two-week cultural festival and the single best time to visit — though flights and rooms need booking many months out.

May to September is cooler and wetter, with more wind and some genuinely stormy days, but also far fewer visitors, lower prices and green grass. The archaeology is just as good in cloud, and arguably better.

December to March is high season for South American and North American holidays.

Rain falls in every month; there is no dry season, only a wetter one from April to June.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

Expect everything to be expensive. Almost all food, fuel and goods arrive by ship or plane from the mainland, and prices reflect it — often double what the same thing costs in Santiago de Chile. The park ticket is a significant fixed cost, and cash is worth carrying.