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Rapa Nui (Easter Island) feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere, approximately 2,220 miles west of the Chilean mainland and 1,200 miles east of the Pitcairn Islands to the west. It really is a speck of land in the huge expanse of the Pacific Ocean. So why go there? To go to the special effort of travelling to one of the world’s most remote, inhabited islands, you might feel that you need a good reason to make the trip – well here are 10 good reasons to make the long journey and visit Easter Island.
The top reason to visit Easter Island is to meet the mysterious moai statues of the island. There are nearly 1000 brooding, human-like moai on the island, making imposing figures in a barren, volcanic landscape.
Most of the moai are within UNESCO recognised Rapa Nui National Park, which requires an entry ticket and an authorised guide. However, you can also see some moai outside the park, including in Hanga Roa, at the Tahai Complex just north of town, and at Anakena Beach on the west coast, where the island’s first settlers are said to have arrived by canoe.
These huge stone carvings look pensive and a little bit lost today. Once they stood proudly on ceremonial platforms (‘Ahu’) overlooking villages and settlements around the island. They are said to embody ‘mana’ or the spirit of important ancestorswhich once watched protectively over villages and settlements.
When you visit Easter Island, make sure you visit the following sites:
Rano Rarakanu – the quarry where the moai were carved, before being abandoned, leaving nearly 300 moai scattered around the hills of the quarry.
Ahu Tongariki – the largest restored ceremonial platform with 14 standing moai.
The Tahai complex – where we could simply sit and soak in the atmosphere whilst the sunset behind the moai.
Anakena Beach – a row of moai with red topknots lined up on a platform overlooking the white sandy beach backed by palm trees – blissful.
For more information about how the moai were made and transported around the island, and where to see the best moai, check out my blog Meet the Moai on Rapa Nui.
When you visit Easter Island, and step off the plan, you immediately know that you have arrived somewhere very special. As soon as our aircraft doors opened, we could hear traditional ukelele music playing outside and found a welcoming committee outside – in front of large white letters spelling, IORANA, meaning ‘welcome’ in Rapanui, was a group of musicians and Polynesian dancers putting on a show for our arrival.
Then, once through the terminal building, we were met by representatives from our hotel, who greeted us with big smiles and pink flower garlands (‘lei’) as a formal welcome. Polynesia, we have arrived!
The big smiles continued throughout our stay, and we felt warmly welcomed by everyone we met on the island – in shops, cafes and restaurants, at the dance show and on the tours. Our tour guide’s smile only dropped when he broke his ukelele strings on his last tour with us!
When it’s time to say gooodbye to Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the tradition is to give garlands of shells as a good luck blessing for a safe flight and onward travel.
On Easter Island, I felt a million miles away from the unrest at home – frustrating politics, meddling media and stresses of daily modern life. It was refreshing to be somewhere where we were very much ‘in the moment’ and people weren’t on their phones 24/7. People really connected with you and spoke from the heart about their island.
Our tour guide said that he had only just been able to get Netflix, due to Starlink coming to the island, so he was catching up on TV shows that have come and gone. With no cinema on the island, simply head for a viewpoint to watch the sunset and enjoy the natural beauty of the island. What a joyous thing to be able to do.
Traffic when you visit Easter Island moves slowly, because the roads require it, and also because there’s just no rush. As a result, there’s a lower healthy and safety risk; few locals wear a seat belt, it’s not unusual to see 3 people on a moped, and trucks go past with young kids on their parent’s knee in the front. It reminded me of my childhood in the 1970s. The biggest risks on the road are chickens, dogs, or horses which might run out in front of your car, so you just need to be vigilant here.
Our tour guide commented that the islanders ‘didn’t need to travel and go anywhere else because everything they need is here’. It’s a wonderful thing to be so content with what you’ve got and focus on protecting it.
That said, it’s not quite as simple as that – many things now desired on the island (usually by the tourists) must be imported. For example, the island gives the impression of being tropical but can’t grow some items such as coconuts. Similarly, there’s no coral reef around the island, so the varieties of fish caught are limited when you think fish would be plentiful. In addition, it made us laugh on the airplane that a couple of local Mums were importing trays of Dunkin Donuts from Santiago, presumably for a kid’s party.
Even the palm trees in Hanga Roa and Anakena Beach have been imported, so our tour guide’s philosophy only works so far!
The vibe when you visit Easter Island is very relaxed and casual. There’s just one town on the island, called Hanga Roa, which is the perfect size to explore on foot.
Stroll around the streets of low-rise buildings cocooned in tropical plants, pop into a craft shop or one of the artisan markets or pick up a coffee and watch the world go by. I loved watching the locals coming and going on mopeds, dogs chasing trucks, and Suzuki jeeps (the vehicle of choice on the island for 60 years!) parking up.
When you visit Easter Island, you’ll notice how the shops keep old-fashioned opening hours – open in the mornings, then close for a long lunch or close early for the day. If you need anything, make sure you head out early.
Nothing was too much trouble for the locals who were always happy to help, best demonstrated by from the lady in the Tourist Information Office who had just locked up when we arrived, but who reopened it up so we could get stamps in our passports – very kind.
Easter Island may be a Chilean Territory, but it feels undoubtedly Polynesian. The bushes are full of tropical, brightly coloured large flowers – just perfect for tucking behind your ear and making your hair look pretty!
Based on the stories passed down through the generations, there are Polynesian designs everywhere – on clothing, wood carvings, buildings, signage and tattoos. In Hanga Roa, I happened upon a shop selling wall posters with wonderful Polynesian art designs for each year of the annual Tapati Rapa Nui festival.
As sea-faring people living on a tiny island surrounded by ocean waters, it is of no surprise that boats feature highly when you visit Easter Island – you’ll spot outrigger canoes lined up in the small port of Hanga Piko or on the sea, flat bottomed boats moored in the harbour and surfers riding the waves at Pea Beach in Hanga Roa. You can take a boat trip yourself or join a diving tour if desired – nice to be able to view the island from the sea.
Chickens and roosters are everywhere on Easter Island. Chickens are held in special regard by the Rapanui having been brought to the island by the Polynesian explorers on their double-hulled canoes over 1000 years ago. Treated as a valuable food source, the early settlers built special stone chicken coops called Hare Moa to protect them from other clans. You can see a good example of one of these at the Tahai Complex.
A traditional dish on Rapa Nui is to cook chicken wrapped in banana leaves in an earth oven (Uma). Tropical bananas grow well in the volcanic lava tubes on the island.
Today chickens are largely free roaming, and so you’ll find them everywhere around Hanga Roa. We enjoyed an evening of Chicken TV at the hotel watching a hen trying to get all her chicks into the branches of a tree to protect them overnight from predators. Interestingly, the list of predators doesn’t include snakes as there aren’t any on the island – another tick in the box for Easter Island!
On the downside, you are woken up by the cockadoodle-doo of roosters in the morning, sometimes much earlier than you would like!
At times it felt as though our visit to Easter Island was accompanied by a ukulele backing track. Our lovely tour guide to the National Park sites brought his ukelele with him and gently strummed away as we wandered around, which made the occasion even more atmospheric. As our guide said, ‘even the bottom of the moai are shaped like a ukelele’ which helps them move or be rocked forwards.
A fun thing to do when you visit Easter Island is to go to a traditional dance performance. There are several companies offering dance and music evenings, the oldest being the Cultural Ballet Kari Kari dance troupe. Before the performance, there was an opportunity to partake in face paints (Polynesian designs) and to try on hair garlands and grab a cocktail or two. The dance performance itself was high energy and compelling – story telling through dance and song.
Our tour guide told us that he was a member of a dance troupe alongside his tour guiding (and building of an AirBnB) to make a good enough wage. He played ukelele in evening shows of several nights of the week.
It felt that we were never too far away from a music or dance opportunity.
Two of the best experiences that you can have when you visit Easter Island is to watch nature ‘do what it does best’ but in strategic places.
For sunrise – head to Tongariki to watch the sunrise over a stunning coastal bay whilst silhouetting an impressive row of moai on the widest ceremonial platform on the island. It really is a wonderful way to start your day.
For sunset – at the other end of the day, sunset is best enjoyed at the Tahai Complex, where you can sit back on a natural amphitheater and watch the sky change colour over the various ceremonial platforms in the complex.
For more information about what to expect at both these Mother Nature events, check out my blog, Sunrise and Sunset: The Best Way to Start and End Your Trip to Easter Island.
There’s something very other worldly about Rapa Nui, partly because of its geography and being surrounded so closely by the Pacific Ocean, and partly because of the mysterious moai on the island. Then Mother Nature comes into play, providing incredible sunrises and sunsets, which in combination with the moai, creates something rather magical.
On both occasions we sat watching the sunrise and sunset, dogs at the National Park sites came and sat with us. They just cuddled up and kept us company for the duration. There was something about this experience which felt spiritual, which is why we started referring to them as our ‘spirit dogs’.
Perhaps this is no surprise on an island where the Polynesians believe that the moai embody the ‘mana’ or spirit of their ancestors, and that the giant stone statues used this mana to ‘walk’ from the quarry where they were carved, to the platforms on the coast where they would stand overlooking their villages.
Despite its remote location, a visit to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) works perfectly with a trip to Chile, in our case a trip to the Chilean Lake District. Santiago is the best entry airport for Chile, and Santiago is also the airport from which LATAM airlines departs for Rapa Nui.
Whist I wouldn’t advise flying into Santiago and immediately flying straight out again, if you give yourself a couple of days in Santiago to acclimatise before flying onwards to Rapa Nui, then the journey doesn’t feel too arduous.
The time zones really help with this as, from the UK, despite the distance flown, the time difference is only -3 hours GMT ( -4 hours when British Summer Time), and Rapa Nui is only -5 hours GMT (-6 hours when British Summer Time).
This means that you can be on the other side of the world but without too much jet lag – amazing!
Using Santiago, Chile, as your hub airport which you will return to from Rapa Nui, you can then either fly to different places in Chile (the Atacama Desert or Punta Arenas for Patagonia), or some of the other South American countries like Argentina or Peru.
I didn’t expect to love Easter Island as much as I did, but it really did get under my skin and was well worth the flying time to get there. That said, it probably was a once in a lifetime visit which might explain why I felt sad leaving. There is a lot to lovewhen you visit Easter Island as outlined above. Try it, you won’t be disappointed…
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