Easter Island

Easter Island is located in the vast expanses of the SouthPacific Ocean, some 3700km west of the Chilean coast and 4020km east of Tahiti. The island is dominated by three dormant volcanoes: Terevaka, Poike and Rano Kau, the largest being Rano Kao, which forms the southwestern wall of the island. The highest point is Mount Terevaka, 507m above sea level. Easter Island has approx. 3,300 residents, predominantly of Polynesian ancestry, descendants of semi-legendary people nicknamed, “Long-Ears” and “Short-Ears”.

Known to its earliest inhabitants as Rapa Nui, the Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggeveen, stumbled upon Easter Island and named it in honour of the day of his arrival in 1722. In 1888, Chile annexed Easter Island, leasing land for sheep farming, but it wasn`t until 1965 the Chilean government appointed a civilian governor and the island’s residents became Chilean citizens in 1966. Nowadays Easter Island's economy is very heavily reliant upon tourism, with the main drawcard being its nearly 1,000 monumental stone statues, called Moai, scattered all over the island and created by the early Rapa Nui peoples, .These Moai (monolithic human statues carved from a single piece of volcanic stone) are Easter Island`s pointers of cultural history and tradition, making for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.