Easter Island Geography & Climate

Rapa Nui is a triangle of volcanic rock about 164 square kilometres in area, roughly 24 kilometres along its longest side, sitting alone in the South Pacific.

Isolation

The nearest inhabited land is Pitcairn, about 2,075 kilometres west; the nearest continental coast is Chile, some 3,700 kilometres east. This is the definition of remoteness in human geography, and it is the single fact that makes everything else here remarkable — that people found it, settled it and built a complex society on it with no contact with anywhere else for centuries.

Three volcanoes

The island is the summit of a much larger volcanic massif rising from the sea floor. Its corners are three extinct cones: Terevaka in the north at 507 metres, the highest point; Poike in the east; and Rano Kau in the south-west, whose crater holds a freshwater lake a kilometre across, matted with reeds.

Rock and soil

Basalt, scoria and, at Rano Raraku, a consolidated volcanic tuff soft enough to work with stone tools and hard enough to last — which is why every moai but a handful came from that one crater. Red scoria for the topknots came from Puna Pau.

No permanent streams

Rain drains straight through the porous rock, so fresh water comes from the crater lakes, from wells and from springs that emerge below the tide line. Water has always been the constraint here.

Coast

Mostly low cliff and broken lava, with very few landing places and only one real sand beach, at Anakena.

Rapa Nui has a subtropical maritime climate, moderated in every direction by the ocean around it.

Temperature

There is very little seasonal range. The warmest months, January to March, average around 20 to 28°C; the coolest, July and August, around 15 to 22°C. It has never frozen, and it rarely gets genuinely hot. Sea temperature runs from about 21°C in winter to 26°C in late summer.

Rain

Around 1,100 to 1,200 millimetres a year, falling in every month, with April to June the wettest. Showers are usually short and heavy and clear quickly, which means a wet morning frequently becomes a fine afternoon — and that a day’s plans should not be abandoned on the basis of the sky at breakfast.

Wind

Persistent and a defining feature. The south-easterly trades blow most of the year, and winter brings stronger systems off the Southern Ocean; there is essentially no shelter on a treeless island, and the wind makes cool days feel much cooler.

Sun

Ultraviolet is high given the latitude and the thin ozone over the southern Pacific, and there is very little natural shade anywhere on the island.

Cyclones and swell

The island sits south of the main tropical cyclone belt and is rarely hit directly, but distant Southern Ocean storms send long swell onto the coast for days at a time, which closes the few landing places and makes the rocky shoreline dangerous well after the weather itself has passed.

Practical effect

Layers, a windproof shell and sun protection, in any month. Waterproof footwear helps at the sites.