No one arrives on Easter Island by accident. It is on the way to nowhere, and it is next to nothing. Chile, the country that has overseen it as a province since 1888, is some 2,300 miles away. You must seek out Easter Island. Why people go to Easter Island has a unique and beguiling past, fragments of which are strewn across the landscape, physical clues to a centuries-old mystery. The island, some 63 square miles of grass-covered volcanic rock in the South Pacific, was settled by Polynesians around 400 A.D. Their descendants had no known contact with the outside world until 1722, when the Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen anchored off the island, naming it in honor of his arrival on Easter Sunday.
       Roggeveen made known what he had seen: a barren island where hundreds of enormous human-shaped statues, called moai, lined the coast. What perplexed him was how such a primitive people, on an island devoid of timber and pack animals, could have moved such megaliths. Roggeveen's reports sparked the interest of other voyagers, and soon ships from Spain and England and France were headed there. But by the time Capt. James Cook arrived in 1772, something important had changed -- the moai were all lying in the grass. This, of course, spawned another question: What had caused the statues to fall?
      To visit Easter Island today -- the inhabitants call it Rapa Nui -- is to explore these mysteries up close, to wander through a centuries-old open-air archaeological museum. The town of Hanga Roa is small, consisting of mostly simple one-story homes and basic shops, nestled in one corner of the island's triangular landscape -- the rest is rustic and generally uninhabited. The moai still line the coasts, toppled except for the roughly three dozen that have been restored upright in recent years. Almost all the sites are without ropes, barriers or signs. The ruins remain au naturel, and the statues now standing look as they did when Roggeveen first saw them.
      Easter Island is one of the most isolated islands in the world but 1200 years ago a double-hulled canoe filled with seafarers from a distant culture landed upon its shores. Over the centuries that followed a remarkable society developed in isolation on the island. For reasons still unknown they began carving giant statues out of volcanic rock. These monuments, known, as "mo ai" are some of the most incredible ancient relics ever discovered. The people of Easter Island called themselves the Rapa Nui. Where did they come from and why did they disappear? Science has learned much about the enigma of Easter Island and has put to rest some of the more bizarre theories, but questions and controversies remain. Enjoy this site and learn what to do and see here. You will soon understand why the visitors keep coming back...