Easter Island - Chile
First published in 2019
Easter Island is one of the most remote places in the world. It belongs to Chile and one of the few options to get there is a flight from Santiago.
Everything outside of Hanga Roa, the main village, is a National Park and you have to pay an entrance fee. There is a booth before the arrival hall at the airport where you can do that. There are a few places in and around Hanga Roa that you can visit on foot. For the rest, I would recommend renting a car.
Driving is not complicated but depending on where you want to go the quality of the streets is not great. We had a small SUV and that was a good choice. The other thing you need to be aware of is the fact that there are many “wild” horses strolling around. As there are next to no fences, they cross the street wherever they want - so be careful.
When you drive around the island you frequently see sightseeing signs. Not all places are really worth a visit. Usually, it’s a Moai (those big stone figures) laying on the ground. But what is now really worth a visit?
Ahu Vai Uri and Ahu Tahai are two groups of Moai that are standing in a park-like area near Hanga Roa. As they are easy to visit on the foot many people, including locals, are gathering here for sunset. Still, it’s a nice place and we’ve been there nearly every evening during our stay.
Ahu Tongariki is another place we visited more than once. What you can find here is a reconstruction as a tsunami smashed the Moai hundreds of meters inland in 1960. The reconstruction started only in 1994 with the help of Japan, but nowadays you cannot tell a difference.
This area directly at the shore is fantastic. We visited it during the daytime first and returned early the next morning for some sunrise pictures. You have to drive quite a bit from Hanga Roa and should plan for some extra time as you really need to drive slowly due to horses crossing the street at unexpected places.
Rano Raruku is the place where the Moai are built. You can find here many statues, but not all are super photogenic. You might end up with one of the pictures you have seen in every report.
As it is the touristic center of the island it can become crowded. Still, it’s a place you must not miss.
There are other interesting places with Moai and, depending on how adventurous you are, some nice caves that are worth visiting. But the last place I would like to recommend is Rano Kao, the volcano of Easter Island.
It’s near Hanga Roa and easy to reach by car, but I believe there are options for public transport as well. Usually, people go to the visitor center and it makes absolute sense to go there as you can look into the crater, but also to some rocks in the ocean. These are playing an important role in the old tradition of becoming the bird-man. You can read more about that here.
What I would recommend on top is parking your car a bit further down the hill and walk around the volcano to the other side. It is not possible to fully walk around it, as the last part near the ocean is just a slim rock barrier. If you are crazy, it might be possible to climb across, but this is really nothing you should consider.
The island is not huge, so two or three days should be good enough to see everything of interest.
