I’ve already shared about the major sites we saw while on Easter Island—Ahu Tongariki, Ranu Raraku, Orongo and Ranu Kau. If you happen to visit Easter Island as part of a cruise, that’s likely all you’ll get to see, because you’ll be ferried ashore (the cruise ships are too large to dock), rushed through those core sites in a single day without getting enough time at any of them, and then head back to sea.

But there’s so much more that the one-day visitor will overlook. Here’s what else we were lucky enough to visit during our time there.

During our first full day, our guide, in addition to taking us to Ahu Tongariki and Ranu Raraku, also drove us to …

Ahu Hanga Te’e

The eight moai which once stood upright here are now toppled, a few with broken necks, and their massive topknots have rolled forward off the platform. I could feel the weight of history, and inevitably thought of Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” (more…)

They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but Irene and I managed to get one at Hetu’u restaurant on Easter Island.

As I mentioned in a few of my previous posts about our trip, we got to spend one more night on Easter Island than originally planned. As we were checking out of Chez Maria Goretti for our flight home that afternoon, we were told there wouldn’t be a flight that afternoon. We assumed it had something to do with the weather, which had been quite stormy the previous night, causing a cancellation of the Tapati festival, but once we arrived at the airport we learned that a passenger had experienced a heart attack on the lone inbound flight from Santiago, causing it to turn back.

As a result, LAN Airlines put us up at the Hotel Tupa at their expense, plus offered to pay for our lunch and dinner. Good on LAN. (Though we didn’t take them up on the dinner, as we spent the night at the festival.) What this all meant is that instead of being on a flight Friday afternoon, we were instead at Hetu’u restaurant, enjoying that free lunch.

Because our meal was paid for courtesy of a coupon handed us by the hotel, we didn’t get to choose from Hetu’u’s varied menu, some of which can be seen on the sandwich board out by the street, but were served a set menu, which ended up being a surprisingly good lunch anyway. (more…)

We initially avoided the Easter Island restaurant La Taverne du Pecheur because it seemed too … well … obvious.

It was in such a perfect spot—right by Caleta Hanga Roa, where the dive shops sent out their boats for scuba and snorkeling—that we figured they’d get a ton of walk-in traffic without a need to serve good food, and so would only have location on their side.

Besides, we preferred to find restaurants a little off the beaten track. (As if Easter Island wasn’t off the beaten track enough!) But then the Belgian family we befriended at Chez Maria Goretti told us we must go … so we went.

We sat on a second story patio outside beneath an umbrella (that may even be our table right above the restaurant’s sign), but soon the heavens opened, and the umbrella wasn’t enough to protect us. We moved to a table under an awning, but remained on the patio, so we could keep our view, which included moai who did not at all care that they were out in a storm. (more…)

Tataku Vave wasn’t the only Easter Island restaurant recommended by my Santiago food guide Karla Lodis. She also said we should head to Tia Berta, where we’d find awesome tuna empanadas. And since Karla had taken us to Rancho Doña Maria, we knew she knew a thing or two about empanadas. So we went for lunch Tuesday … and then returned Wednesday.

Which ought to tell you what we thought of those empanadas.

We went the first day in the company of our Easter Island guide Cristin Arvalo Pakarati, who once again, unprompted, validated Karla’s choice in restaurants. (more…)

Before we left Santiago, our food guide Karla Lodis recommended three restaurants I should try while on Easter Island. At the top of the list? Tataku Vave, which she said served the best ceviches and fresh fish.

Then, once on Easter Island, I asked our local guide Cristin Arvalo Pakarati which restaurant he thought served the best fish. His answer, without any prompting from me? Tataku Vave.

And so, Monday night, after our first day’s touring, Tataku Vave it was!

We timed our meal to end at the right time for us to amble over to that night’s installment of the Tapati festival, set to begin at 9:45, which meant that as we ate out on the patio we were once more treated to a terrific sunset. (more…)

As I told you back when I started my account of our vacation with its ending, my plan was to bounce around in time and share completely out of order. So now, even though I already posted about Ranu Raraku, Orongo and other amazing sights (and sites) on Easter Island, it’s time to go back to our first night there.

We landed early Sunday afternoon at Mataveri International Airport, where we bought our five-day ticket to Rapa Nui National Park, gathered our luggage, and were met by a shuttle which took us to Chez Maria Goretti, our home away from home for the next five nights. We were too excited to take any time to settle in, and so quickly slathered ourselves with sunscreen and headed out in search of the Museo Antropológico P. Sebastián Englert, which is recommended as a way to begin one’s visit.

We (of course) headed the wrong way from our hotel, and wandered the streets of Hanga Roa, the island’s main town, from which we spotted our first moai off in the distance. We bumped into a young American named Laura, involved in a company (or perhaps a foundation) which hoped to promote local tea made out of nasturtiums, and she led us to the main street and gave us tips on shops and restaurants.

Irene and I had no plans for a sit-down meal that night, but figured we’d instead grab food from the vendors at that night’s Tapati festival … which we sadly never found.

Strangely, the schedule which had been handed out at the Santiago airport was out of date, and Sunday’s event (we’d learn the following day) was taking place at Hanga Piko rather than Hanga Vare-Vare, so we wouldn’t get out first taste of Tapati until Monday. But we did get to experience our first Easter Island sunset. (more…)

Our visit to Easter Island took place right in the middle of their summer, which runs from December to March. The weather was mostly warm and brilliantly sunny, and though there was rain at the end of our time there, we got a few rainbows out of it, which was nice. But more importantly, we were also there in the middle of the annual Tapati festival, which this year ran from February 1st through the 15th.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ve attended exhibitions of local culture before, by Māori in New Zealand and by Aboriginal Australians, and while I felt lucky to have had those glimpses of culture, and though the performers may have been talented, they seemed in a “let’s do our best to entertain and educate the tourists” mode. So they seemed more rote and instructional than anything alive.

But the Tapati festival was very different. It’s something done by the locals for the locals, and the tourists who happen to be there are completely incidental to the process. The festival has been going on for nearly 50 years, since before tourism was really a thing, and would continue to do so whether we were there or not. We were just privileged witnesses, and not really the intended audience.

Each day we were there, there were morning, afternoon, and evening competitions on which teams and individuals would complete to earn points so that their chosen candidate would be crowned Queen of Tapati. Much like the Olympics, a panel of experts would judge each performance or presentation on a 10-point scale. (We never saw anyone earn anything lower than an 8.)

I did not at any time feel as if I was at a performance. It felt like a family gathering, with audience members calling out to their friends on stage, singing along to the familiar (to them) songs, and occasionally dancing the same routines as those competing, sometimes equally as precise as the competitors. It had the warmth of a high school play crossed with a small town football game, but with an even bigger heart. I was allowed to feel as if I was among friends, even though I was not. I felt amazingly connected. (more…)

As I explained earlier, the five-day ticket to Rapa Nui National Park allows for unlimited access to all sites save two—Ranu Raraku, the moai quarry, and Orongo, the village central to the Birdman cult. The guide we’d hired for our initial two days on the island, Cristin Arvalo Pakarati, included Ranu Raraku during our Monday tour, while he took us to Orongo on Tuesday, along with Ahu Tepeu, Ahu Aki, Puna Pau, Ranu Kau, and Ahu Vinapu.

Orongo rests on the lip of the extinct volcano Rano Kau between the caldera and the sea, but there’s a viewing area (from which the photo above was taken) before you pass through the visitors center that limits access to the village itself. So it’s possible to return and view the crater—which is nearly a mile across—as often as you’d like. (more…)

I’d mentioned earlier that there are two sites you only get to visit once during your time on Easter Island, but didn’t get into the details. So here’s how it works.

Once you exit your plane at Mataveri International Airport, but before you get your luggage, there’s a booth where you can buy the ticket which allows entrance to all of Rapa Nui National Park. The ticket is good for five days, starting not at the moment of purchase, but from the time it’s stamped at one of those two sites with limited entries, either Ranu Raraku or Orongo. You can revisit any other site as many times as you want—and there are several Irene and I did return to—but those two, being the largest and most popular, are restricted.

Ranu Raraku is the quarry from which almost all of the island’s moai were carved, and contains hundreds of them, some upright, some fallen or buried, some never completed or moved—such as “El Gigante” above, the largest moai ever, nearly 72 feet tall. (more…)

I’ve been finding myself surprisingly uncertain how to write up our trip to Easter Island in a way that will properly convey its wonders. And so I’ve decided that rather than attempting to create a single, all-encompassing post that will do so, I’ll just share random memories over the next week from our time there, and hope that together they’ll give a good picture of what it’s like to visit place. So let’s start with our three visits to Ahu Tongariki.

Ahu Tongariki is the largest moai platform on Easter Island. Though its 15 moai are upright today, they were toppled during internal conflicts that began in the 18th century, and then further damage was done by a tsunami in 1960 that swept the artifacts inland. But it was restored during the ’90s, and it’s now one of the island’s most-visited sites, followed only by Ranu Raraku, the quarry from which all moai were carved and transported, and Orongo, a ceremonial village important to the Birdman cult, with views of the smaller islands Motu Nui and Motu Iti.

But visitors to Easter Island are only allowed to visit Ranu Raraku and Orongo once during a visit, while all other sites may be returned to again and again, which meant that when we were in the mood for more awe, it was Ahu Tongariki that pulled us back. (more…)