I was on Easter Island (and then Peru) for a few days in June.
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is just a speck in the Pacific, 14 miles wide, and it’s 2,200 miles from mainland Chile, making it the most remote place on Earth. The island is volcanic, and the landscape is extinct volcanoes and craters. The population is about 7,800 people, mostly in the island's one town, Hanga Roa.
The island is famous for its hundreds of giant head statues, moai, which represent or contain spiritual power of the Rapa Nui people’s ancestors. The moai were carved from about 1100 to 1680 AD.
Almost all of the statues are made from soft stone from one quarry on the side of the Rano Raraku crater. There are still many statues at the quarry, incomplete or never delivered to their final destination. Those quarry heads were my favorites.
Late in the island's history, a strange "bird man" cult replaced the ancestor religion on the island. Each year champions (hopu) would compete to "collect the first sooty tern egg of the season from the islet of Motu Nui, swim back to Rapa Nui [the main island] and climb the sea cliff of Rano Kau to the clifftop village of Orongo." (Wikipedia.) The sponsor of the winning champion would become the island’s leader for the year. "The race was very dangerous and many hopu were killed by sharks, by drowning, or by falling from cliff faces..."
My pics are Motu Nui, the Rano Kau volcano, the Orongo village, and a bird man petroglyph. To parse the petroglyph, compare it to the diagrams here.
Animals - horses, cows, dogs, cats, chickens - pretty much roam free on the island. A guide told me it was because the island was so small, there was really no place they could run off to. :) Here are some horses grazing in Hanga Roa’s colorful cemetery.
Last, some views of the Pacific.
