Easter Island & Patagonia

Easter Island & Patagonia Overview

A thorough exploration of Easter Island on foot, combined with walks amongst the most spectacular rock pinnacles in the world.

Easter Island has to be one of the strangest mysteries on the planet. Many of us, of a certain age, will remember seeing Thor Heyerdahl’s film of his 1947 Kon Tiki expedition and reading his powerful books that first voiced the theory that the people of Easter Island came originally from South America. He proposed that the Inca sun worshipers of Peru sailed towards the setting sun on balsa wood rafts and by chance made landing on Easter Island, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. His theories today are largely discounted but why the 800 giant statues were carved, how they were transported around the island, and where the Rapa Nui people came from is still hotly debated.

Our walking holiday on Easter Island is a thorough exploration of this beautiful volcanic island. Each day walk has a different objective and include visits to the quarries where the stones were made, walks to the top of the three main extinct volcanoes, a fabulous walk along the northern coastline, and visits to the caves where the Rapa Nui hid from slave ships. We provide knowledgeable English-speaking guides who will show you many amazing things, such as the stone tower observatories that the people used for star gazing. There is free time as well, and you might like to horse ride, hire bicycles, take a boat trip, or go scuba diving.

As Easter Island is an awfully long way to go from the U.K we have combined it with some excellent day walks in Patagonia beforehand, taking in all the highlights of the spectacular Torres del Paine National Park. The Torres del Paine are arguably the most spectacular rock pinnacles in the world, and we get close up and personal with the towers during our five and a half days spent exploring the park. Accommodation here will be in a geodesic dome at the award winning, centrally located EcoCamp.