Happy Easter(island)!

Happy Easter: Dream now – travel later!

Dear customers, friends, fans, and interested parties,

The current situation is demanding a lot from us. We have placed ourselves at the service of society and are foregoing many social contacts. For some of you, the coming period will be particularly challenging, and I wish you much strength to get through it.

Coronavirus or not: we won't let it get us down and will continue to make it our mission to whisk you away to foreign countries.

This year,Easter Islandfits my Easter greeting like a glove. Its isolated location in the middle of the Southeast Pacific, cut off from civilization, is reminiscent of our current coronavirus isolation. 

And by the way: Easter Island is so named because it was discovered on Easter Sunday in 1722.

A six-hour flight from Santiago de Chile takes you to this extraordinary island with its nearly 880 famous stone statues, majestic volcanic peaks, rugged cliffs, and white South Sea beach.

Normally. But at the moment, Easter Island has also closed itself off. There are currently two people infected with the coronavirus, and an increase in the number of cases would be fatal on the island with its 7,700 inhabitants: there are only three ventilators.

Someday we will be able to travel to Easter Island again. Until then, we will simply plan the trip in our minds.

I wish you a happy Easter!

Stay strong! Stay home! And above all: stay healthy! 

Yours, Stephanie Gräf

P.S.: My extremely popular Easter article from 2015: 10 Easter customs from around the world that you definitely don't know about

Almost exactly 298 years ago, on Easter Sunday, Dutch navigator Jakob Roggeveen became the first European to discover the Polynesian island of Rapa Nui and named it Easter Island.

With the ships Arend, Thienhoven, Africaansche Galey and a total crew of 260 men, Jakob Roggeveen left Amsterdam on June 16, 1721, and reached the Pacific in January 1722 after rounding Cape Horn.

During his circumnavigation of the globe, on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722, he discovered the Polynesian island of Rapa Nui for Europe, which he named Paasch Eyland (Easter Island).

The travelogue written by Carl Friedrich Behrens, a German who accompanied the expedition, made the island and its statues famous throughout Europe.

It was really a matter of luck to come across this small and completely isolated island in the middle of the vast Southeast Pacific between the South American mainland and the Polynesian South Seas. Its volcanic peak is the only one of a 2,500 km long submarine mountain range to rise out of the sea. All other volcanoes in the Salas y Gómez Basin lie below the sea surface.

Easter Island is famous for its approximately 880 monumental stone sculptures, known as moai, as well as its preserved Polynesian and Maori traditions and culture. Politically, it belongs to Chile, but geographically it belongs to Polynesia (like Tahiti, Bora Bora, and Moorea, for example).

Since 1995, Easter Island (Rapa Nui) has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site as Rapa Nui National Park.

Their isolated location is what makes the Easter Islands so special: a language developed from a Polynesian dialect that is only spoken here.

The coral reefs characteristic of many Pacific islands are absent here, and the coastline drops steeply to a depth of 3,000 meters. The coastline is rocky and rugged. At the southwestern tip and in the east, on the Poike Peninsula, steep cliffs rise up to 300 meters high.

And yet, when you're swimming in the turquoise Pacific Ocean on a white beach with a view of a row of moai statues, you can't help but feel like you're in the South Seas.

Shall we stay in touch?