See all Posts in the Wanderlust – A Travel Blog Series
People often ask me which is my favorite country. That is such a difficult question. It’s like asking who I love more: my wife, my mother or my daughter. I love them all, just in different ways.
But if you ask me what some of the coolest places on earth are, I have ready answers. One of those places is Easter Island.
Easter Island is a remote speck of land in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. Only 63 square miles in size, it is nearly 1,300 miles from the nearest inhabited island and over 2,000 miles from the nearest continent.
Easter Island is a Chilean territory, so the most practical way to get there is by plane from Santiago with LATAM, a Chilean multinational airline. Flights are available daily.
It takes a Boeing Dreamliner seven hours over vast stretches of empty blue water to get there from Santiago. Hotels and vacation rentals are readily available upon arrival.
A notable feature of Mataveri International (the world’s most remote airport), is its enormous, two-mile-long runway, constructed in 1987 by NASA as an abort location for the U.S. Space Shuttle.
Besides the airport, what makes Easter Island cool? Let’s start with the people who found it and settled there. Scholars believe that Polynesian seafarers have inhabited the island for over 1,000 years. Why did they come?
In ancient Polynesia, if you lost your battle with the king, you were forced to get in your canoe and find some other place to live. These intrepid exiles, with only the stars to guide them, set out across the Pacific, not knowing that Easter Island even existed.
Once they found it, they returned and brought their friends and families to settle in their new land, traveling over a thousand miles in each direction. In canoes!
This is a breathtaking navigational accomplishment, especially for a culture with no written language. It is also an extraordinary feat of human endurance. Polynesian history and culture have earned my deep respect and admiration for these amazing accomplishments.
But wait, there is more! Easter Island is best known for the Moai statues that dot the island.
More than 1,000 of these volcanic stone monoliths are known to exist. Some have crumbled into rubble, while others remain remarkably well-preserved. They are believed to represent ancestors and serve as a conduit for communication with the gods.
The majority of the Moai statues are situated along the coast, each a couple of hundred yards apart, facing inland. The one exception to this is a group of statues called Ahu Tongariki, which faces the sea in the direction that the original settlers would have called home.
There is also a volcanic stone quarry with statues in various stages of completion. One of the great unanswered questions about these tall, ungainly figures is how they got from the quarry to other locations far across the island. Oral tradition has it that they walked.
Easter Island is so remote that when the Rapa Nui first arrived, there were no native mammal species on the island. Archaeologists believe that rats accompanied the travelers and established huge colonies once ashore, numbering as many as 75 per acre.
The animals consumed palm seeds and bird eggs, contributing to the island’s deforestation and the collapse of bird populations. Without large trees to make seaworthy canoes, the islanders could no longer travel or fish beyond the coastal bays. A population that once numbered 15,000 dwindled to fewer than 200 individuals by the late 1800s.
The remote location, the fascinating Polynesian culture and history, and the raw beauty of the place combine to make this one of the most incredible places on earth.
Share it with your wife, or your mother, or your daughter. There is plenty of love to go around.
(Dan Keyport is a CCLN board member and former Chaska business owner, now retired. His home base for international travel has been Chaska for more than 30 years.)
