Easter Island Travel Guide

Easter Island sits 2,300 miles off the Chilean coast, a five and a half hour flight from Santiago on the only commercial route that serves it. Rapa Nui is politically Chilean and culturally Polynesian, and the distance is not an inconvenience to be endured on the way to the moai. It is the fact that produced them.

Nearly 900 moai were carved here, most of them still lying in and around the Rano Raraku quarry where they were made, in every stage from rough outline to finished and abandoned in transit. Fifteen stand restored in a row at Ahu Tongariki with their backs to the sea. But the island rewards the days that are not spent at the archaeological sites, whether that is the beach at Anakena, the crater at Rano Kau, or simply time in Hanga Roa.

The flight schedule tends to dictate your dates rather than fitting around them, and five or six days on the ground is what the journey justifies. This is its own trip, not an add-on to a mainland itinerary.

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