Easter Island is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people.
With its mysterious, stoic moai watching over the island and craterous, seemingly barren landscapes that hint at a turbid, fascinating history, Easter Island captivates most travelers.
Many things about Easter Island raise questions including where the original Rapa Nui came from, why they carved the statues, how the statues were moved, and why the statues were eventually destroyed. If you’re lucky, you’ll find answers to some of these questions by taking a tour of Easter Island.
Easter Island is now a part of Chilean territory and influences from Chile are strong. The descendants of Rapa Nui constantly strive to remember their cultural heritage through the practice of their culture in dance, art and music. In early February, the annual event Rapa Nui celebrates the island’s history and culture with the Tapati Festival. You will be able to watch the locals perform traditional dance, music and theater.
If you’re not into history, you’ll definitely enjoy being in nature. Elsewhere around the island you can hike volcanoes, investigate lava tubes, and visit Orongo, the cradle for the ‘birdman’ religion which was thought to have supplanted the moai’s centrality to islanders. It involved a Spartan endurance swim in order to capture the egg of a bird nesting on an offshore island.
Landscape-wise, Easter Island is barren, treeless and fenceless, and pockmarked with extinct volcanoes, though it’s also incredibly flat in places. It’s fervently green. Horses and cows roam freely, a result of squabbles over land ownership between farmers and Chilean landowners. It feels a little more Polynesian at Anakena, the island’s only beach, which is lined with palm trees and good for swimming if the water isn’t too rough.
According to the Internet
