Northern Chile - Easter Island

Easter Island is a destination that seems to inhabit our subconscious. The image of those great stone moai with their backs to the vast Pacific strikes some chord within us, recalls some ancient, creative urge.

This is the world's most isolated bit of land, a tiny pinprick in the great pacific, a mound of consolidated lava and ash from three submarine volcanoes. The natives call their island Rapa Nui or Te Pito o Te Henua, 'the navel of the earth.'

Linguistic and cultural comparisons indicate that the first humans on Easter Island arrived from the west, most likely from the Marquesas islands or Mangareva, as part of a greater migratory process which spread Polynesian culture throughout the south Pacific. However, the twelve centuries which elapsed between the arrival of the first intrepid 'settlers' near 500 AD and the 'discovery' of the island in 1722 by the Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen are among the world's great mysteries.