2000 miles from anywhere

Easter Island has a unique, strange, mysterious, quality. Imagine the most remote place in the world inhabited by people, probably from Polynesia, over 1000 years ago. They create a fantastically complicated and successful culture. The problem is that the culture is based around the creation of massive statues (Moai) and their transportation requires lots and lots of wood. So much wood that the island´s forests are destroyed and the social structure collapses because they can´t renew their fishing boats and feed themselves. Fights break out between different tribes and most of the Moai are destroyed. Then slave traders arrive who deport most of population to mines in Peru and Chile. They get second thoughts about the morality of this and after killing most of them off with hard work, ship the rest back with enough small pox to kill off the few indigenous people left on the island. In doing this all the knowledge about the culture , the Moai, even the written language is lost

You are left with a beautiful, mysterious Polynesian island that fascinates and bewitches tourists such as us.

Grungy tourists after a 6 hour, 20 mile trek across lava fields