EASTER ISLAND VACATION TRAVEL

Where: Easter Island lies in the eastern South Pacific Ocean, due south of Salt Lake City, Utah, and due east of Brisbane, Australia.
When: The island shares the "Mountain Time Zone" with Denver and Calgary, GMT minus six hours. Daylight Saving Time runs from mid-October to mid-March.
Why: The Pacific's largest body of archaeological sites is here, an unforgettable World Heritage Site. The island itself is rugged and beautiful, and the people helpful.
How: LanChile Airlines flies here from Santiago and Papeete twice a week.
Who: Three-quarters of the island's 3,800 inhabitants are Polynesian. Today they are citizens of Chile.

Information For the Tourist

• Most visitors require only a passport valid six months ahead to stay 90 days in Chile. Visas are not necessary for North Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, and most Europeans to travel here. Check this at any LanChile Airlines office. An entry tax or cobro por reciprocidad is collected upon arrival in Chile, with the amount varying according to nationality (U.S. passports US$100, Canada US$55, Australia US$30, Mexico US$15, etc.). This rather high tax is valid for the duration of the passport and doesn't have to be paid again each visit. No vaccinations are required.

• The local currency is the Chilean peso. Credit cards are rarely usable on Easter Island as those accepting them have to wait a long time to be paid. Some hotels levy a 10% service charge for the use of credit cards.

• If you want to pay something approaching local prices, ask how much the item or service costs in pesos. Only tourists pay in U.S. dollars and dollar prices are invariably higher. When prices are quoted in dollars, you can usually save a small amount by asking to pay in pesos. Easter Island is less expensive than French Polynesia but more costly than the rest of Chile.

How You Get to Easter Island

LanChile Airlines flies a Boeing 767 from Tahiti and Santiago to Easter Island twice a week. In the high season December to March, extra Santiago-Easter Island flights are added. From North America and Europe, LanChile has direct flights to Santiago from Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Madrid, and Frankfurt. People in Europe and Australia can have Easter Island included in a cheap round-the-world ticket, something that usually isn't possible in North America. Travelers in Canada and the U.S. can have Easter Island added to any LanChile ticket to Santiago quite inexpensively. The departure tax is US$26 to Tahiti or US$7 to Santiago, but it's usually included in the ticket price.

Getting Around in Easter Island

There's no public transport but the locals are pretty good about giving lifts. Over 100 clearly-marked taxis patrol the streets of Hanga Roa. For hikers, the taxis are handy to get somewhere in the morning with the intention of walking back to town. Otherwise, you can arrange to be picked up wherever you like later in the day. Bargaining may be required to avoid paying inflated tourist prices.
The hotels and several offices along the main street rent vehicles. Most are 4WD jeeps due to the rugged terrain. Prices vary and bargaining is possible in the off season from April to October. The roads to Anakena and Rano Raraku are now fully paved, making bicycling a lot more practical than it was, and you should be able to rent a bike without difficulty.

Basic Rapanui phrases:

Hello, welcome, goodbye How are you ? (sing) How are you ? (plural) Very well, good Please Thank you Your welcome What is your name? Cheers ! (toast)	Iorana! Pehe koe? Pehe korua? Riva-riva Ana hanga koe Maururu O te aha no Ko ai tou ingoa? Manuia (paka-paka)

Stone Giants

On average, they stand 13 feet high and weigh 14 tons, human heads-on-torsos carved in the male form from rough hardened volcanic ash. The islanders call them "moai," and they have puzzled ethnographers, archaeologists, and visitors to the island since the first European explorers arrived here in 1722. In their isolation, why did the early Easter Islanders undertake this colossal statue-building effort? Unfortunately, there is no written record (and the oral history is scant) to help tell the story of this remote land, its people, and the significance of the nearly 900 giant moai that punctuate Easter Island's barren landscape.

What do they mean?

The moai and ceremonial sites are along the coast, with a concentration on Easter Island's southeast coast. Here, the moai are more 'standardized' in design, and are believed to have been carved, transported, and erected between AD 1400 and 1600. They stand with their backs to the sea and are believed by most archaeologists to represent the spirits of ancestors, chiefs, or other high-ranking males who held important positions in the history of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, the name given by the indigenous people to their island in the 1860s.
Archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg, who has studied the moai for many years, believes the statues may have been created in the image of various paramount chiefs. They were not individualized portrait sculptures, but standardized representations of powerful individuals. The moai may also hold a sacred role in the life of the Rapa Nui, acting as ceremonial conduits for communication with the gods. According to Van Tilburg, their physical position between earth and sky puts them on both secular and sacred ground; secular in their representation of chief and their ability to physically prop up the sky, and sacred in their proximity to the heavenly gods. Van Tilburg concludes, "The moai thus mediates between sky and earth, people and chiefs, and chiefs and gods."

What is an ahu?

The word "ahu" has two meanings in Easter Island culture. First, an ahu is the flat mound or stone pedestal upon which the moai stand. The ahus are, on average, about four feet high. The word 'ahu' also signifies a sacred ceremonial site where several moai stand. Ahu Akivi, for example, is an ahu site with seven standing moai.

Moai Stats

The following statistics on Easter Island's moai are the results of Van Tilburg's survey in 1989. She reported, "A total of 887 monolithic statues has been located by the survey to date on Easter Island...397 are still in situ in quarries at the Rano Raraku central production center.....Fully 288 statues (32% of 887) were successfully transported to a variety of image ahu locations....Another 92 are recorded as "in transport," 47 of these lying in various positions on prepared roads or tracks outside the Rano Raraku zone."

Number of Moai

Total number of moai on Easter Island: 887
Total number of maoi that were successfully transported to their final ahu locations: 288 (32% of 887)
Total number of moai still in the Rano Raraku quarry: 397 (45%)
Total number of moai lying 'in transit' outside of the Rano Raraku quarry: 92 (10%)

Less than one third of all carved moai actually made it to a final ceremonial ahu site. Was this due to the inherent difficulties in transporting them? Were the ones that remain in the quarry (45%) deemed culturally unworthy of transport? Were they originally intended to remain in place on the quarry slopes? Or had the islanders run out of the resources necessary to complete the Herculean task of carving and moving the moai?

Size and weight of moai

Measuring the size, weight, and shape of the 887 moai on Easter Island has been a 15-year process for Van Tilburg. The most notable statues are listed below:
• Largest moai:
Location: Rano Raraku Quarry, named "El Gigante"
Height: 71.93 feet, (21.60 meters)
Weight: approximately 145-165 tons (160-182 metric tons)

• Largest moai once erect:
Location: Ahu Te Pito Kura, Named "Paro"
Height: 32.63 feet (9.80 meters)
Weight: approximately 82 tons (74.39 metric tons)

• Largest moai fallen while being erected:
Location: Ahu Hanga Te Tenga
Height: 33.10 feet (9.94 meters)

• Smallest standing moai:
Location: Poike
Height: 3.76 feet (1.13 meters)

Van Tilburg's painstaking effort to inventory and carefully measure the nearly 900 moai statues on Easter Island has enabled her to construct a digital version of an average moai. This digital statue has informed her hypothesis for a potential transport method for moving the moai; the statue which Van Tilburg's team will attempt to move and erect for the NOVA program has been made to the exact dimensions of this digital moai. The dimensions are as follows:
• Statistically average moai:
Height: 13.29 feet (4.05 meters)
Width at Base: 5.25 feet (1.6 meters)
Width at Head: 4.86 feet (1.48 meters)
Depth through body at midpoint: 3.02 feet (92 cm.)
Total volume: 210.48 cubic feet (5.96 cubic meters)
Center of gravity: 4.46 feet (1.36 meters)
Total weight: 13.78 tons (12.5 metric tons)

Statue Map | Map of Easter Island

Chile | South America

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