Rapa Nui

I had wanted to visit Easter Island ever since I was a child, and saw the pictures of the ‘heads’. Back then, the world seemed vast, and difficult (expensive) to travel. But somehow, it changed as a I reached adulthood, and one day I realised that this destination was actually within reach.

Even better, around the time I was planning to visit, I received an opportunity to work from the company’s Netherlands office. It was no difference to them to fly me back to Kuala Lumpur or onward to Santiago, and so I found myself halfway there more easily than I thought.

Easter Island – or Rapa Nui, as I discovered it was really called by its people (or Isla de Pascua, by its government) – was my first introduction to the Pacific. Ironic, that it happened from the other side of the ocean than the one adjacent to my region. This was the trip that piqued my interest about this region I had dismissed for so long as being only village islands. For just by going in person, I saw quite a few things differently than what I was told about Easter Island.

It caused me to return to the Pacific several more times, each time discovering more and more depth to this region normally depicted only as dreamy holiday island playgrounds with grass-skirted natives. It led to a gradual overturning of my worldview.