Rapa Nui National Park Ticket: Price, the 10-Day Rule and the One-Visit Sites
The park ticket costs around USD 100, lasts 10 days, and admits you to Rano Raraku and Orongo once each. Here is what that actually means for your trip.
Almost everything you came to Rapa Nui to see sits inside Rapa Nui National Park, which is managed by Ma'u Henua, the Rapa Nui community organisation that holds the park concession. To enter any archaeological site you need two separate things: a park ticket, and an accredited guide. Neither substitutes for the other.
The ticket has one rule that changes how you should plan your entire trip, and most visitors do not discover it until they are standing at a gate.
The rule that matters
Your ticket is valid for 10 consecutive days from first use and lets you revisit most sites freely. But Rano Raraku and Orongo — the moai quarry and the birdman village — admit you once each. One entry. If the weather is bad or you are rushed, that was your visit.
What it costs
For international visitors, the adult ticket is around USD 100, with a reduced rate for children roughly aged 7 to 12 and free entry for under-sevens. Chilean residents pay a lower rate in pesos. Prices were adjusted in late 2025, so treat any figure you read — including this one — as needing confirmation at the point of purchase.
The ticket is per person and is completely separate from guiding fees. If a guide quotes you a price, ask explicitly whether the park ticket is inside or outside that number. Both are normal; the ambiguity is what causes arguments.
Where to buy it
Online, before you travel. This is what we recommend. You pick a date, pay in advance, and skip the queue on arrival day. Official visitor sales for the park entrance are handled through an authorised Chilean booking platform; buy only through channels linked from the official park sources.
In person in Hanga Roa. There is a single Ma'u Henua ticket office in the centre of town, just below the artisan market. It generally opens for a period after flight arrivals, including Sundays. This works, but it costs you time on a day when you would rather be at Tahai watching the sun go down.
A small planning detail with real consequences
The 10-day validity starts at your first entry, not at purchase. On a four or five-day trip this is never the binding constraint, so do not let it push you into compressing your days. The single-entry rule is the constraint that matters.
Why the single-entry rule is such a problem
Rano Raraku is the quarry where the moai were carved. Nearly four hundred statues in various stages of completion lie on and in the slope, including the ones still attached to the rock. It is the single most extraordinary place on the island, and for most visitors it is the reason they came.
Orongo is the ceremonial village on the rim of the Rano Kau crater, where the birdman competition was held. The setting — crater on one side, thousand-foot cliff and open Pacific on the other — is the other unforgettable thing on Rapa Nui.
You get one shot at each. Consider what that means in practice:
- If you visit the quarry on a morning of heavy rain, you have seen the quarry in heavy rain. There is no second attempt, no rain check, no refund.
- If you visit Orongo in the afternoon when cloud has settled into the crater, you may not see the crater at all.
- If you book a rushed group tour that gives you forty minutes at Rano Raraku, forty minutes is what you get, forever.
This is the reason we argue so hard about the order of your days rather than the list of sites. Sequencing is the only defence against a bad-weather day costing you the best part of the trip. We wrote that up separately in how to sequence your days.
The guide requirement
Park rules require every visitor to be accompanied by an accredited guide, or by a member of the Rapa Nui community, to enter the archaeological sites. This is not a recommendation and it is not an upsell invented by tour operators — it is how the park is administered, and it is checked.
Practically, this means the real question is never "should I hire a guide on Easter Island". It is "which guide, and for how many days". Anyone offering to let you wander the sites unaccompanied is either misunderstanding the rules or ignoring them, and the second is worse.
An accredited guide should be registered with SERNATUR and approved by Ma'u Henua. Both are reasonable things to ask about before you pay a deposit.
What the ticket does not cover
- Guiding. Separate, and mandatory.
- Transport. The island is small but the sites are spread out; the quarry is a half-hour drive from town.
- Anything outside the park boundary, including most of Hanga Roa itself.
Common mistakes
- Assuming the park ticket includes a guide. It does not, and you cannot enter sites without one.
- Spending your single Rano Raraku entry on the first available morning without checking the forecast.
- Visiting Orongo in the late afternoon, when cloud commonly fills the Rano Kau crater.
- Booking a group tour that covers both single-entry sites on the same rushed day.
- Buying the ticket on arrival day and losing your first afternoon to the queue.
- Taking any published price, including ours, as current. Confirm at purchase.
Before you buy
Two things to settle first. Decide how many days you actually need, because that determines when your ticket should start. And make sure your entry paperwork is in order, because a park ticket is worthless if the PDI will not let you board in Santiago.
Prices and rules on this page were last verified in August 2026. Ma'u Henua publishes the current position, and we link it rather than paraphrase it for exactly this reason.