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 Just one ATM by TheWanderingCamel
There are several internet cafes on the island - access can be frustratingly slow and is quite expensive, but it is there if you can't bear to be deprived of your regular contacts withthe outside world.
Petrol is cheap as it is subsidised - there is only one petrol station on the island, in Hanga Roa, near the airport. There is only one paved road outside the town, this crosses the middle of the island out to Anakena. All the other roads are unpaved, some little more than very rough tracks. If you're heading for somewhere off the main tracks ask about conditions before you set out as heavy rain can cause considerable damage to the lesser tracks.
Outside Hanga Roa, the only public loos are at the museum, Orongo Village, Rano Raraku and Anakena.
There are three small supermarkets and one bakery where you can pick up food for a picnic if you're heading off for the whole day away from Hanga Roa. Remember that virtually everything - and certainly anything manufactured - is imported from the mainland when you look at the high prices of food here. Fresh fruit and vegetables are available from the Feria Municipal in the centre of town. The only place to get food or drinks outside the town is out at the beach at Anakeva. Leave a Comment
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 by TheWanderingCamel
The map on the Park website shows the extent of the park's jurisdiction. Leave a Comment
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The image of a totally bare island is somewhat belied by the photos here. Certainly by the time the first Europeans came to Rapa Nui, the rapacious demands of the moai cult had seen the island all but completely denuded of trees. The great stands of palm trees similar to Chilean wine palms were completely gone, and the few specimens of the hauhau, from the fibre of which they made their ropes, and the toromiro - a good firewood tree - were poor stunted things. When Thor Heyerdahl arrived even these sad specimens were reduced to a single, sickly toromiro that struggled on until 1964, and then was gone. The native trees of Rapa Nui were extinct.
The arrival of European settlers - Chileans and a British livestock company that leased the island for many years as a sheep farm - saw the introduction of eucalypts as plantation trees, and guava. The guava are everywhere now and form an important part of the island diet, you are bound to be given guava juice for breakfast whilst you're on the island and it will probably be your welcome drink as well when you first arrive. As they have proved in so many other parts of the world, eucalypts bring their own problems - they are very efficient colonisers and do not allow other plants to invade their territory. Planting them is now actively discouraged but the eucalyptus groves dotted around the place do provide a welcome stretch of cool shade every now and then. Monterey cypress are being planted in their place as plantation timber .... which may bring its own problems in time. Coconut palms shade Anakena beach and Hanga Roa streets and gardens are planted with a wide variety of exotic species.
For the most part though, the island's landscape is one of treeless grassy slopes and a wild black rocky shore.
Meanwhile, a dedicated group of botanists around the world are striving to bring one species back from extinction. Before that last toromiro died, seed and tissue samples were taken from it and stored. An international programme has been operating for several years now to raise enough trees from those samples to reintroduce the tree to Rapa Nui. The prognosos isn't wonderful, the gene pool is restricted to that one last tree, but progress is being made and a small plantation of 150 trees has been planted on the island, though it isn't doing very well. For the time being, the toromiro is a botanical oddity, teetering on the absolute edge, with the Easter Island plantation and a few specimens growing in far-flung botanical gardens. Leave a Comment
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I wish I'd found this website before I arrived on Easter Island. It's jam-packed with excellent advice on how to get the best photos of all the island's sites, especially the best time of day to visit the various ahu so that you have the benefit of the optimum lighting of the moai. I would advise anyone planning a visit to print it off and take it with you. Leave a Comment
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Horses were introduced to Easter Island in the 19th century and quickly became an indispensable part of island life. Now, horses roam all over the island, and seen from a distance, as this small herd was by the crater lake at Rano Raraku, they add a picturesque touch to the landscape. If only that was all there was to it.
Whilst the numbers are officially said to be about 1000, the reality is that there are far more, and the island cannot sustain them. Nominally, 90% of the animals are "owned", in practice almost all are feral, left to roam at will. Living like this, any animal will become malnourished, dehydrated and diseased. So it was with Rapa Nui's horses, and then, some 20 years ago, a new hazard to their well being was inadvertently introduced.
The deforestation of the island combined with the reduction of good grazing caused by overstocking by horses and cattle has made the island extremely vulnerable to invasion by opportunistic plants such as guavas and eucalypts. One such invader is the chocho - Crotolaria grahamiana - a member of the lupin family. Introduced as a control for soil erosion, this plant is actually extremely toxic to horses and cattle. Eating it has a devastating effect on these animals causing blindness, staggering and irreversable liver damage, invariably leading to a long, slow and painful death . But simply blitzing the plant and removing it from the island - which is next to impossible, the plant now covers huge areas - is not the answer. That would lead to more deaths by malnutrition ... a real Catch 22.
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Help came via a young American veterinarian student who visited the island and was both distressed and professionally interested in the problem of the "caballos locos" - the "mad horses" (the symptoms they display when affected by chocho are just the same as BSE - the infamous mad cow disease). Determined to do something positive, he worked on identifying the problem and then returned to the island to initiate a volunteer programme to help the Rapa Nui improve all aspects of their husbandry of their horses.
There has been a knock-on effect in the management of stray dogs too. In January 2006, for the first time, a volunteer veterinary team came to the island to begin a neutering and spaying programme to begin to address the problem.
Ongoing programmes that address the problem by neutering animals with a real chance of survival, teach and encourage good animal husbandry, and practise judicious euthanizing, are the best hope for the future.
Want to know more? Watch this Leave a Comment
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 a typical Ahu by wadekorzanLeave a Comment
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 "Dancing Moai" by wadekorzan
If a moai looks a bit unstable, I wold not stand under it, as I am sure you would not want one of these huge statues to fall on you! Leave a Comment
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Easter Island is a great destination for photographers. What about the moai and ahu, the scenery with the wild coastline, the volcano's and the people of Rapa Nui.
Some tips to think about:
- Off course you want to have a picture together with a moai; best place to make these
kind of pictures is the 'moai factory' of Ranu Raraku. Here you can come as close as you
want to the moai.
Please don't do it on other ahu, because these are sacred places for the people of Rapa Nui
and you shouldn't walk on these altars.
- Everywhere on the island you will see horses; wild and also people riding on them.
When you want to make a picture of Rapa Nui people riding their horses please ask
permission to make a pic (some of them will ask you some money !!).
- The best place to make a picture from a fantastic sunset is Tahai, just north of Hanga Roa. Leave a Comment
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Our visit to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) was part of an around the world trip. A more or less affordable way to visit this most remote inhabited island in the world. We were attracted by an article in a travel magazine and a TV documentary. Off course we saw pictures of some standing moai and thought that might be all.
We were so curious to ‘discover’ Rapa Nui and to see the giant stone statues with our own eyes. The reality was so different from the pictures, it was almost unbelievable. We saw 38 re-erected moai standing on 8 altars (ahu) all over the island. But we never realised there were much more moai. Most impressive is the ‘moai factory’ on the slopes of the Rano Raraku, where almost 400 moai in all stages of carving can be found.
Some facts about the moai, which we heard, read or saw with our own eyes.
If you have more or supplementary information about the moai of Rapa Nui please let me know.
- total number of moai on Easter Island: 887
- number of moai successfully transported to an ahu: 288
- number of moai in the Rano Raraku quarry: 397
- carving and erecting moai started around the year 700, but the most were made between 1000 and 1650
- due to fighting’s between rival tribes the moai were destroyed; the last one was thrown down in 1864
- from 1950 on moai were restored and re-erected
- the smallest moai is just 1,13 m; the largest moai once erect is 9,80 m
For those who are interested to read more about the moai and the mysteries of Rapa Nui I can recommend a couple of websites:
- http://www.world-mysteries.com/easter_island.htm (with a lot of links)
- http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/easter1.htm
- http://www.islandheritage.org/
- http://www.visitrapanui.cl/
Hope you will enjoy your trip to Rapa Nui. Leave a Comment
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Of course we did read a lot about Easter Island and found excellent information on the internet (also VT), but we HIGHLY recommend to take at least one guided tour on the island. Otherwise it is almost impossible to understand the mysteries of the moai and the very special culture of Rapa Nui.
We still regret we didn't take other (half) day tours !!
We did a whole day tour with AO Tour, with Patricio Ballerino. This guy is really one of the best guides we ever had during our travels. Patricio has always small groups, because he has to transport his 'guests' in his mini bus. He speaks English very well.
He was more a host than a tour guide. Always willing to explain things, never in a hurry. Besides he is a great guy.
Website: www.aotour.cl
E-mail: patricio@aotour.cl Leave a Comment
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