Easter Island

Chile

To give you an idea of just how isolated a place this is, Santiago is a five-hour flight away, and the nearest inhabited island is Pitcairn, 1,200 miles to the north west.

This might help explain why the islanders, of Polynesian descent, are so independent - they believe themselves to be Rapa Nui people with little or no connection to Chile.

An agreeable year-round climate allows travellers to walk along the Easter Island coastline and visit the numerous ‘ahus’ that contain the gigantic ‘moai’ head statues. Who made these stone sculptures, and when, remains an unsolved mystery, but it is presumed that the island was inhabited from the beginning of the first centuries AD and that the moais are several hundreds of years old.

It is also known that numerous tribes lived on the island during a time when they fought amongst themselves, destroying the environment. It is not known why they also destroyed the majority of the moai.

Explore this mysterious island in the company of an expert guide. Treks range from the easy to the moderately difficult, and are combined with picnic meals on the rocks of the seashore.

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