We were driving down a narrow road lined with stone walls and looking out at some splendid horses grazing on green-yellow fields among rolling hills. Except for the yellow hue, it seemed more like Ireland than a South Pacific island.
I had anticipated a small, remote, not particularly attractive island that happened to have these world-famous, colossal stone statues.
"Well, it is small," Yan conceded.
About 64 square miles, the island is roughly 14 miles long and no more than seven miles wide.
"And it is remote," he added.
Rapa Nui - that's what its Polynesian natives call Easter Island - is, in fact, the most-remote inhabited island in the world. It sits in the South Pacific Ocean 2,300 miles west of South America, 2,500 miles southeast of Tahiti, 4,300 miles south of Hawaii, 3,700 miles north of Antarctica. The closest other inhabited island is 1,260 miles away - tiny Pitcairn Island, where the mutineers of HMS Bounty settled in 1790.
The original Polynesian settlers called Easter Island "Te Pito o Te Henua" - "the navel [center] of the world." There's a small, round stone monument here that marks what they thought was the world's center.
Easter Island may be remote, but it's very easy to get to. LanChile, the national airline of Chile, flies jet airplanes here twice weekly from Santiago, Chile's capital, and twice weekly from Tahiti. The island has been a part of Chile since 1852.
The landing strip is first-rate because the U.S. space agency NASA upgraded the existing one to serve as an emergency landing facility for the Space Shuttle.
There is no coral reef surrounding the island - unusual for a South Pacific island - and there are only two small, white-sand beaches. Its coastline is rugged - again, with scenes that are more like Ireland than the South Pacific.
What makes Easter Island so special is not just what you see here, but also how you feel here.
