Crossing to Robinson Crusoe Island to Easter Island - Day 4 at Sea

This morning, the sky was already red before sunrise. This is usually a sign of bad weather, but it was beautiful all day, calm, and quite warm at over 25°C.

We have since learned quite a bit about the Easter Islands. It is now considered certain, due to linguistic and DNA analysis, that the first people on Easter Island originated from Polynesia and arrived sometime after 400 AD. Before the arrival of Europeans, there were contacts with other South Sea Islands, although they are more than 2,000 km away, and few contacts with people from the mainland of the South American continent.

The population then steadily grew and reached a cultural peak around 1000 AD. More and more land was cleared for the ever-growing population, new settlements were built, and resources became increasingly scarce. It is believed that by around 1600 AD, all the trees had been cut down. On the small island, there were years of violent conflicts afterward. By around 1670, the production of stone figures (Moai) also ceased, and many Moai were toppled in mutual conflicts. Following the discovery of the island, the Europeans met the typical fate. First, the island was sighted by chance, ultimately taken possession of by Spaniards, British, French, etc., and annexed by Chile in 1888. During this time, around 2,000 islanders were more or less voluntarily deported as laborers. In the 1860s, this became known, and due to public pressure, surviving laborers were returned to the island. In the process, smallpox was introduced, and the number of islanders was reduced to 111 by the year 1878. The island is now called Rapa Nui, although that is certainly not the original name.

Today, the island has an international airport that is served daily by a 737. The runway was built by the USA as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle.