Easter Island has a reputation for being an expensive place to visit, and some costs are unavoidable. Flights from mainland Chile are limited, Rapa Nui National Park admission is charged separately and most archaeological sites require an accredited guide.
We spent two nights on Rapa Nui, and our total came to roughly £1,332 for two people, or £666 per person, including return flights from Santiago, accommodation, tours, National Park tickets, local transport, food, a cultural show and souvenirs.
This post contains affiliate links and display advertising. If you make a purchase through one of our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps support the running of this blog.
For help planning the trip itself, start with our Easter Island Travel Guide: How to Plan a Trip to Rapa Nui.
Flights and Accommodation
Our return flights from Santiago cost £478 each, including one shared checked bag and one cabin bag. Flights are likely to be one of the biggest variables in your budget.
We paid £220 for two nights at Cabañas Raupa, or £110 each. We chose a self contained cabin because it gave us more flexibility than a hotel, including a kitchen and fridge so we could keep drinks and snacks there and sort some of our own breakfasts and lunches.
Read our full Cabañas Raupa review for more on where we stayed.
Tours, Tickets and Activities
We did two organised tours during our stay. Our full day Rapa Nui tour cost £59.34 per person, aand covered the major eastern and northern sites, including Rano Raraku, Ahu Tongariki and Anakena. We then booked a half day tour for £24.54 per person, which covered Orongo, the Rano Kau volcanic crater and Ahu Vinapu.
The National Park ticket was one of the biggest costs once we reached the island, at £81.99 per person.
We also went to a traditional Rapa Nui cultural show, choosing the ticket without dinner, which cost £30 each. For such a short trip, we found the tours worthwhile because most archaeological sites require an accredited guide anyway, and they allowed us to cover a large part of the island without arranging our own transport.
Getting Around Rapa Nui
We didn’t hire a car during our stay since transport was included with both of our organised tours.
Outside the tours, we spent CLP 50,000 in total on transport. This included a CLP 10,000 transfer and CLP 40,000 for a private morning hire, which took us back to Anakena before continuing to the airport.
For such a short trip, using tours and paying for the occasional transfer worked well for us and meant we didn’t need to hire a car.
Food and Drinks
We spent around £102 each on food and drinks across our two nights on Rapa Nui. That covered a mix of snacks and simple breakfasts at the cabin, light lunches while we were out, drinks, food at Anakena and a proper sit down dinner at Te Moana.
Our dinner at Te Moana was the most expensive meal of the trip, coming to CLP 104,280, around £85 for two, including a starter, two mains and drinks.
Having a kitchen and fridge at Cabañas Raupa helped keep the rest of our food spending relatively low. We could pick up snacks and simple breakfast or lunch items from the on site shop rather.
Is Easter Island Expensive?
Unsurprisingly, the biggest expense was simply getting to Rapa Nui. Once flights were taken out of the equation, our main costs were the National Park ticket and guided tours.
We could probably have spent less by skipping the cultural show, eating out less and choosing fewer tours, but we would also have seen considerably less of Rapa Nui. Given that we managed to fit Rano Kau, Orongo, Rano Raraku, Ahu Tongariki, Anakena, Hanga Roa and several other archaeological sites into two nights, we felt the overall cost was reasonable for such a remote destination.
For exactly how we fitted everything in, see our 2 Days on Easter Island: Our Rapa Nui Itinerary.
