Easter Island, Chile

Another Unesco card, this time from Chile. This one comes from a swap with the lovely Daniela in Chile, her mother visited Easter Island recently and Daniela asked her to mail some postcards from there. ..so not only do I have a very beautiful postcard of Easter Island, it also comes with special cancellations. :) Thank you so much, Daniela!



Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeastern most point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile annexed in 1888, Easter Island is widely famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site with much of the island protected within the Rapa Nui National Park. In recent times the island has served as a cautionary tale about the cultural and environmental dangers of overexploitation. Ethnographers and archaeologists now argue that the introduction of diseases carried by European colonizers and the slave raiding that devastated the population in the 1860s had a much greater social than environmental impact.



And here are the stamps with the special cancellations! :) The bigger stamp is from a set of 2 stamps issued earlier this year, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Chilean football team. The smaller stamps are from a set of 5 stamps issued in 2009, depicting Protected Birds in Chile. The one here are Tricahue Parrot (on the right) and Chilean Flamingo (left).