November 2019
Tom L.
Chile: Easter Island, Rapa Nui, Isla de Pascua
An opportunity to visit a legendary location
I never thought I’d ever get to see one of the most remote locations on the planet - Easter Island. It was so named because Dutch Explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovered it on Easter Sunday, April 5th, 1722. While I can go into the remarkable history of Easter Island, I’d rather you did some research yourself online so instead, for now, I’m going to mostly concentrate on our trip and what it took to make this happen.
I’ll start by stating once again it really never occurred to me that I’d be visiting this particular World Heritage site. Going there has given me a new outlook on how I can best travel. I had originally planned to go to South America, but in truth I had planned to go to Peru, Bolivia and Northern Chile. My main goal was to see Cusco, Machu Picchu and Tiwanaku, but after looking at how to best spend some airline points as well as being concerned about altitude sickness possibly ruining a trip, I decided to revamp the plans by looking at visiting further in South America like Santiago, Chile and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Once I spent time researching a completely different trip than I originally thought I’d be going on I realized that I’d be completely missing out on many megalithic sites that I yearned to see. I started researching archeological sites in Chile and Argentina. The main one that kept popping up in searches that was of immediate interest was Easter Island. There are plenty of amazing archeological sites in the deserts of Northern Chile and some other interesting archeological sights in the other countries we intended on visiting, but the only one that rivaled and maybe even surpassed Machu Picchu in my mind... was Easter Island.
edso namedALL PHOTOS BY: Angela Erdmann and Thomas Lonero
A lesson in patience
Now if I’m to be honest, I never even knew Easter Island was part of Chile. It never occurred to me. Besides, even from Chile it was still a 5 hour flight out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so could we even afford the trip? A quick Google search showed me that if we were going to go about 4 weeks out, which we weren’t because our trip was still about 6 months out, we absolutely could have afforded it. Round trip air was floating around $300.00 RT from Santiago about 3-4 weeks out on the day I happened to perform the Google search. The catch was that it was floating around $1200 to $1600 Round trip 6 months out when our trip was scheduled, which unfortunately was definitely out of our price range. It also looked like LATAM Airlines was the only airline that did regular flights to Easter Island from Santiago. We were likely going to be out of luck. I told myself I’d loosely keep an eye on airfare just in case. I went about planning our stay in Chile on the mainland.
Besides
ALL PHOTOS BY: Angela Erdmann and Thomas Lonero
ALL PHOTOS BY: Angela Erdmann and Thomas Lonero
Due diligence
As the months went by, I noticed an interesting trend when I would go to check on prices. The prices were always more expensive 3-9 months out and seemed to be cheaper 4-6 weeks out. I kept my fingers crossed that we’d be able to book a reasonable flight, as our trip got closer. About 5 weeks out the RT air from Santiago came down to about $330. Afraid the price would go back up, I pulled the trigger on the tickets. I’m not sure if the price went up or down a week later to under $300. I’m glad I bought the tickets when I did because when it came time to board the plane, it was packed. We had even been able to snag plus seating when we booked. That extra leg room is nice on 5-hour flights. If I had waited a little while longer there’s a real good chance the flight would have been booked and we wouldn’t have been able to book another flight in the narrow window we would be in Chile. The rest of our South American trip was already booked, flights and all. It wasn’t an option to change everything around at this point. If we were going to add Easter Island to our already packed itinerary then I needed to do so at that moment. I can’t stress enough how happy we are that we decided to add Isla de Pascua to our trip.. It wound up being a spectacular part of our journey and a truly once in a lifetime experience. It was an honor to visit such a unique island, the Moai and the people that call it home.
ALL PHOTOS BY: Angela Erdmann and Thomas Lonero
ALL PHOTOS BY: Angela Erdmann and Thomas Lonero
A few things to keep in mind
If you’re planning to visit Easter Island as a US tourist know that you can only stay up to 30 days and not the 90 days you can stay in Chile because the island is considered a special territory. The island is small. You really only need a few days to see the entire island. Any more than that would just be for the R & R. You’ll need to show your return ticket if requested at the airport, which proves you’re not staying over the legal amount of time. You’ll obviously need your passport, which no longer gets a special stamp at the Rapa Nui airport when you land. If you want the super cool passport stamp (Moai heads) you’ll need to get it at a special government location in the local town of Hanga Roa. The locals can direct you where you need to go. You'll also need, and this is important, a reservation letter provided by the establishment you booked your stay at to give to customs to prove you have a place to stay when you get to the island. Wherever your stay is needs to be approved by Sernatur, the national tourism service of Chile. You’ll also need to fill out a Rapa Nui entry form (IRN) online. After filling out the IRN you’ll get a confirmation email that you’ll need to print so you can also present that to the PDI at the airport. Make sure you have your ducks in a row by the time you get to the airport. The information on what you need is available and provided online.
ALL PHOTOS BY: Angela Erdmann and Thomas Lonero
Bottom Line. If it's someplace you'd like to see, make it happen.
Times is ticking. Even the Moai with their weathering know that. Someday in somebodies lifetime, they won't exist as they do today. The ability we had to move freely around the island may not exist even in the near future. When we took this trip we had complete access. Of course no one can touch the Moai because of preservation issues, but we took our own tour at our own pace. That was priceless. We were able to take enough time to bond with the island and its past. That's all we really wanted. The town on the island is Hanga Roa. By itself, it is a completely unique experience and was worth discussing in a separate blog post you can also find on this site.
