Hanga Roa, Easter Island, Chile

Rapa Nui. Easter Island. I have dreamed of going to Easter Island for decades. The fact that is one of the most remote islands in the world led me to think that I would probably not ever have a chance to visit here.
But, here we are.... for 2 days......and sadly, it’s too rough to get off the ship.☹️
One is challenged with seeing the positive in this situation. We are at Easter Island. We can see the moai from the ship. It has been gorgeous weather (except for the swells) and we saw 2 full, double rainbows yesterday.
There are some passengers who got off last week to go to Machu Picchu and we are supposed to pick them up here. Right now, they are just trying to get them back on the ship. Apparently the opening where we board the tender fills with water from the big swells every time they open it-i’m glad I’m not in charge.
Some of the locals came out to our ship last night and did an incredible show. It was even more appreciated since they had a bit of a harrowing ride over, then had to use the pilot’s ladder to get on board.
Alexandra Edwards is on board with the expedition team and she has lived on Easter Island for 25 years. She is a wealth of knowledge and has provided us with science-based facts about the history here, what they are quite sure of and also what is still a bit of a mystery. We will circle the island today with her narrative as we go, but it sounds like that is as close as we’re going to get. Alexandra and her father have written a book about Easter Island so it is interesting to hear from someone who dispels many of the myths of the island. We were fortunate to have dinner with her one evening and we were intrigued to hear of her life here and her experiences studying the moai and thoughts as to what happened to the civilization that created them.
It is named Easter Island because Dutch settlers arrived here on Easter Sunday 1722. There are 3 volcanoes here. The island is famous for it’s almost 1000 statues averaging 13 feet tall and weighing about 14 tons. Many are placed along the shoreline as seen in the photo below and were carved using stone from the quarry shown below. There are theories as to the reasoning for the statues and questions as to why this civilization collapsed.Read more