Easter Island is one of the most unusual and mysterious of lands, full of charm and intelligence. Located in the South Pacific, about three thousand kilometers from the American continent and more than two thousand from the island of Pitcairn. Rapa Nui (as the natives call it) is one of the most remote islands in the world.
Easter Island owes its name to the strange days of the landing of the first European, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, occurred on Easter Sunday of 1722. Politically Rapa Nui belongs to Chile since 1888. The island has a strange triangular shape, almost completely flat except for the three volcanoes, Terevaka Poike, east, and Rano Kau, south-west.
Not far from the coast there are three smaller atolls where you can enjoy your south american vacations: Motu Iti, Motu Kau Kau and Motu Nui, a sacred place of the primitive inhabitants, as nesting terns, gray bird related to the Cult of Man. Easter Island has no rivers, with little vegetation and few trees. Just the lack of vegetation has generated a lot of imaginative hypothesis about the decline of the civilization of Mao.
Looking at the large monolithic statues, called Moai Giant Heads, it’s not surprising that Rapa Nui is the subject of many theories about the extra-terrestrial. No one yet knows what the purpose of these giants, derived from a single block of volcanic tuff, probably served to commemorate the most important tribal chiefs, but the uncertainty feeds the myth.
Another unique element is the ancient language of the island: the Rongorongo. This is a writing course with bustrofedon, never fully deciphered. Easter Island offers visitors breathtaking scenery: lava fields, caves overlooking the sea, vertical cliffs, volcanic lakes. Rapa Nui in 1995 was declared World Heritage by UNESCO.
The island has many hotels and accommodation facilities for tourists, but there is one airline that connects it to Chile, virtually the only way to reach the island, due to the scarcity of landing places for ships.
Despite this difficulty, Easter Island is a wonderful holiday destination. Brought to you by Travel Seas and Oceans
By Elsi H
Rapa Nui photos: Brais, Walter Weinberg, Andrew Newdigate, Vladimir Kruperkin, Sandra Schaenzer, Alessandro Calza.
