Hanga Roa City Tour

Located on the southwestern coast of the Chilean province of Easter Island, Hanga Roa means ‘wide bay’ for the body of water on which the small city sits.

After hotel pickup, your guide takes you to the open-air artisan market, where 40-some grass-hut stalls offer for sale original driftwood and shell carvings, as well as the island's famous statues known as moai, wide-eyed human figures carved out of rock, a traditional form of art by the indigenous Rapa Nui.

Continue to the Father Sebastian Englert Anthropological Museum, founded in 1973 and named after the German missionary who had lived on the island for more than 30 years and documented the Rapa Nui language, customs and culture.

Look upon the museum’s top exhibit: a female moai with a white coral and red scoria eye, discovered at Anakena Beach and considered rare, as most moai statues found are male.

Most of the displays appear in Spanish but don't worry if you don’t speak the language — your knowledgeable guide explains the island’s history and the significance of the artifacts that you see along the way, including obsidian stone tools and fishhooks.

Your next stop, the Church of the Holy Cross, provides a great example of how Catholic and Rapa Nui cultures combined and share the same space. See the façade's classic Christian themes juxtaposed with birdmen motifs, along with Rongorongo inscriptions, a type of Rapa Nui glyphs.

Walk inside the church and observe how this fusion continues: Western figures in paintings wear Rapa Nui ornaments, and one altar rests on top of a block of native volcanic stone.

Having obtained a good base knowledge of the island’s history and culture, you’ll be taken back to your hotel.