Easter Island is one of the world's most isolated inhabited islands. It is 3,600 km (2,237 miles) west of continental Chile and 2,075 km (1,290 miles) east of Pitcairn (Sala y Gomez 415 kilometres to the east is closer but uninhabited).

It has a latitude close to that of Caldera, Chile, an area of 163.6 km² (63 sq. miles), and a maximum altitude of 507 metres. There are three Rano (freshwater Crater lakes) at Rano Kau, Rano Raraku and Rano Aroi near the summit of Terevaka, but no permanent streams or rivers.

Why Rapa Nui?
On Easter Sunday, 1722 Easter Island was found and named by its first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who was searching for Davi's island. The island's official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, is Spanish for "Easter Island".

The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui or "Big Rapa", was coined by labor immigrants from Rapa in the Bass Islands, who likened it to their home island in the aftermath of the Peruvian slave deportations in the 1870s.However, Thor Heyerdahl has claimed that the naming would have been the opposite, Rapa being the original name of Easter Island and Rapa Iti named by its refugees.

There are several options for the "original" Polynesian name for Easter Island. Including Te pito o te henua, or the "The Navel of the World" due to its isolation. Legends claim that the island was first named as Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka, or the "Little piece of land of Hau Maka"


http://www.bugbog.com/images/galleries/chile_pictures/easter_island_pictures2.jpg