Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Chile - UNESCO World Heritage Site

 Place: Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Chile

Weather: Mainly sunny, 68/77F.

Route: I've finished North America, South America, Europe, a good part of the middle east, and Africa.  So, in order to see a few places in the South Pacific I have to cheat a little from my previous rule of being approximately within a days drive between each site.

Rapa Nui is over 12,000 km from Durban, South Africa. In my mind I would be going east, but the shortest distance would be going west, past South America. Rapa Nui is oddly on almost exactly the same latitude as Durban.

Significance: Rapa Nui in the local language, but known to most of the world as Easter Island has some of the most iconic megaliths in the world.  These statues were hewn from the soft volcanic rock of the island. Rapa Nui is also a story of environmental degradation. Eventually the population outgrew the islands resources. The island used to be covered with palm trees, but those trees were all cut down as the population grew. The topsoil then eventually washed away with the rain into the sea. Sadly the remaining population then started to starve and there was massive violence on the island. As part of these conflicts some of the statues (which were seen as ancestors who protected the people) were destroyed and placed face down.

Video:

Images:

A line of statues - they were traditionally facing a village in order to protect it (from whc.unesco.org)

The status were between 3 and 11 meters (from whc.unesco.org)