Easter Island, which is also known as Rapa Nui or Isla de Pascua (Spanish), is a small island located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. The island has a total area of around 164 square kilometres and the official languages on the island are Spanish and Rapa Nui. Easter Island has belonged to Chile since 1988 and it has the status of a “special territory” and belongs in the Valparaíso region, but it is also considered its own province and the island only consists of one commune; both are called “Isla de Pascua”. The island is a part of UNESCO’s world heritage list and much of the island is protected within the Rapa Nui national park which means the Easter Island is protected so the history and culture of the island are preserved.
Easter Island is well-known for its around 1000 monumental statues, called “moai”. The moai human figures were carved by the Rapa Nui people around the years 1250-1500. Around half of them are still located in Rano Raraku but hundreds have been transported and put on stone platforms, that are called Ahu, around the island’s perimeter.
It currently lives around 7750 people on Easter Island, which the mayor Pedro Edmund Paoa has said is the max capacity for the island. Thus the congress approved an act that aimed to minimize the number of tourists allowed on the island and the number of permanent residents on the island. Tourists are only allowed to stay on the island for 30 days now, instead of the 90 days that it used to be. The island’s Polynesian inhabitants are believed to have reached the island somewhere between the years 800 to 1200. When Europeans arrived on the island in 1722 the population of the island was estimated to be around 2000-3000. European diseases, the Peruvian slave raiding and emigrations to other islands drastically decreased the population and left the population as low as 111 native inhabitants on the island in 1877.
The island is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. The Pitcairn Island is the nearest land, the island is 2075 km (1289 miles) away. The nearest continental point is in Chile which is around 3500 km (2182 miles). The average temperature is around 24 degrees Celsius (75 degrees Fahrenheit) as the warmest and the average low temperature is around 18 degrees Celsius (64.2 degrees Fahrenheit). The warmest month is usually February.
Have you ever visited Easter Island or would you like to visit the island in the future?
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