A blip of an island within the bigger drama of mid-Pacific currents, Rapa Nui barely rises above the ocean. It is the highest part of a mostly underwater volcanic ridge, the highest peak reaching just over 500 meters. 64 square miles in area, it’s shaped like an empanada, as people like to say. It is over 2,000 miles east of Chile, and 1,200 miles west of Tahiti, with no other inhabited islands in between. Of the 7 or 8,000 people who live there, half are Rapanui, and most of the others are emigrants from Chile. Its moai statues are the most famous part of a fascinating culture developed by its Polynesian settlers during centuries of isolation. The weather is sub-tropical; when I visited in the austral winter, the weather was labile, in the 60s and 70s, sometimes rainy, mostly windy.
