Easter Island Seabird Adventure |

Easter Island nature trips. This morning you will fly over the Pacific Ocean, covering more than 2,300 miles separating Santiago de Chile from Easter Island. At Mataveri airport your guide, ready to start your adventure in Rapa Nui, will welcome you. During the afternoon, we will undertake an interesting exploration of the village of Hanga Roa and its immediate surroundings, visiting the ceremonial site – or Ahu – of Tahai; this will be our first encounter with the iconic moai, the famous and unique stone statues of Rapa Nui. We will also learn about other stone structures, including the boat-like ‘house’ foundations or hare paenga, as well as the poultry housings or hare moa, of which there are plenty across the island. At Ahu Tahai, we will pay homage to William Malloy, a famous scholar and anthropologist who lived and died in the island; the whole site of Tahai is part of his reconstruction efforts. By the end of the day and just before sunset, we will visit the Ahu Akivi, an impressive array of seven standing moai, facing the ocean. Many islanders believe that the seven moai represent the young scouts sent ahead of the main migration under king Hotu Matu’a. They are said to look towards their homeland in west-central Polynesia.

Overnight Hotel Altiplanico or Hotel Iorana, Hanga Roa. (Dinner)(Guide)

Today we will visit some of the most dramatic and distinctive archaeological sites of Rapa Nui. We will begin our day driving along the southern coast towards the impressive volcanic crater of Rano Raraku, located near the eastern tip of the island. This promontory, now declared World Heritage Site, was extensively used for nearly 500 years, as was the main quarry to carve the moai statues out of volcanic compacted ash or tuff. We will explore the skirt of the mountain and admire from the path, hundreds of unfinished statues; some are partly buried and standing while others are embedded in the ash of the volcano slopes. The largest moai ever built is here, measuring more than 70 feet long and weighing close to 270 tonnes! This ghostly scene of Rano Raraku seems like if all the workers had to suddenly abandon their duties at the workshop at once! Continuing along the path, and admiring the scenic coastline as well as the ‘moai path’, we will spend some time studying Tukuturi, a very unusual moai in a kneeling posture and entirely different from any standard statue. Containing 15 huge erected moai, Ahu Tongariki is the largest ceremonial site in the whole of Rapa Nui. The array includes a very large moai of more than 80 tonnes and even one statue has a top-knot of red scoria, which was brought from another distant quarry, located at the other side of the island. All the moai of this huge ahu were toppled during the island’s civil wars; and even in the twentieth century, the whole site was swept by the massive tsunami of 1960. There is a huge amount of stonework scattered around the site, including several topknots or pukao, moai and petroglyphs showing lots of motifs, including tuna fish, frigatebirds and the God-like face of Make-make. Heading back to Hanga Roa, we shall visit Ahu Akahanga, along the coastal road. This place is a destroyed ahu containing several overturned moai with huge topknots scattered around; there also are some striking semi-pyramidal burial sites, built out of large piles of rock. There is an optional 2-hour boat trip to the motus, Motu Iti, Motu Nui and Motu Kau Kau, the three volcanic islets located off the southwestern tip of the island. Here we will concentrate in identifying the several Pterodroma -or gadfly- petrels which occur here: Herald Petrel, Kermadec Petrel, Phoenix Petrel and Henderson’s Petrel. Other seabirds found here include Brown Noddy, Great Frigatebird, and Masked Booby.

Overnight Hotel Altiplanico or Hotel Iorana, Hanga Roa. (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner)(Guide)

This morning destination will be the stunning ceremonial site of Orongo, located at the southeastern tip of the island. The impressive setting of the huge caldera of the extinct Rano Kau volcano and the surrounding village make this location one of the main highlights of the whole Rapa Nui tour. The microclimate inside the caldera, nearly a mile in diameter, accounts for the presence of various species of endemic plants, and the lake itself was an important source of freshwater in times of drought. Orongo village is also the main entrance to Rapa Nui National Park; we will visit here the characteristic oval-shaped stone houses that sheltered the contestants of the ancient competition rituals of the Bird Man, Tangata Manu. This striking ceremonial site was extensively restored in 1974 by the American archaeologist William Mulloy, and unlike several other sites that are less exposed to wind and rain, the houses at Orongo were built with benmorite, a type of basalt found only in the area. The entrances to the various shelters are quite low, as is the case with all the housing of the island, in order to protect the inside against wind and cold. Along the cliffs and besides the main structures, we will admire an array of different petroglyphs, many depicting birdman motifs or even the face of the god Make-make. Later we will explore the site of Vinapu, where we will compare ahu sites built over very different period of times during the history of Rapa Nui civilization. We will be certainly impressed by the quality and accuracy of the stonemasonry at the back of one of the ahu; they appear to be very similar to other wall structures of the Inca in South America, but is the result of the local progress in construction of these massive stone structures.

Overnight Hotel Altiplanico or Hotel Iorana, Hanga Roa. (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner)(Guide)

On our fourth day at Rapa Nui we plan to visit Anakena Beach. This is a beautiful location with the most extensive beach on the island, wonderful diving and swimming and a grove of coconut palms. There are three ahu at this location, being Ahu Nau Nau the most colourful and well preserved of the whole island. This ahu was recently restored in the 1980’s by the local archaeologist Sergio Rapu. Although Anakena is one of the few places to have palm-trees brought from Tahiti in the 1960s today, archaeological digs have demonstrated that Rapa Nui was once covered by hundreds of thousands of palms, very much like the Chilean honey-palm. We will finish the day by visiting the interesting site of Puna Pau, also known as the “quarry of the hats”. This cinder cone holds the red scoria that characterized the hats or pukao of the moai. It is certainly overwhelming to realize that the hats have to be transferred such a long distance from this quarry to several ceremonial sites scattered around the Island.

Overnight Hotel Altiplanico or Hotel Iorana, Hanga Roa. (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner)(Guide)

This morning you will have the chance to visit the crafts market and other stores of the village. We also recommend you visit the comprehensive Sebastian Englert anthropological museum, which holds phenomenal displays and collections of the pre-history and history of Rapa Nui. Your guide will transfer you to Mataveri airport for your flight back to Santiago de Chile, where our trip ends. (Breakfast)