Researching which moai statues to visit on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in Chile can be overwhelming. I speak from experience, having spent many hours planning to make the most of a week on this ...

Known for its mysterious stone Moai statues, Easter Island has a somewhat enigmatic history, largely due to the fact that ...

These moai represent the original ancestor from ... The Chilean government claimed possession of Easter Island in 1888 and, in 1935, designated it a national park, to preserve thousands of ...

Among the many secrets buried in Easter Island prehistory is the question of how the Rapanui people transported the multi-ton statues, or moai, from their quarries to their final ceremonial ahu ...

On average, they stand 13 feet high and weigh 14 tons, human heads-on-torsos carved in the male form from rough hardened volcanic ash. The islanders call them "moai," and they have puzzled ...

"On a crisp September morning, I rushed out to Ahu Tongariki near Rano Raraku in order to see the sun rise over the 15 moai." Jon Canfield Easter Island Moai. Courtesy of Flickr user Ndecam.

The oldest moai dates back to 1300 ... only airline that flies out of Santiago into Hanga Roa, the capital of Easter Island. It takes about five-and-a-half hours to reach Hanga Roa, with LATAM ...

In a remote patch of the Pacific Ocean lies Rapa Nui, otherwise known as Easter Island. It’s a tiny, windswept place, famed for its colossal Moai – mysterious stone figures that each weigh ...

This story appears in the July 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine. On a winter night last June, José Antonio Tuki, a 30-year-old artist on Easter Island, did one of the things he loves ...

He later served aboard the USS Mohican, which visited Easter Island in 1886 to collect large stone sculptures, known as moai, for the Smithsonian Institute. Cooke’s Smithsonian report repeatedly ...