I've flown in and out of Mataveri and I know it sounds superstitious or whatever, but I felt that isolation. It's amazing to me that the Polynesians were able to colonize so widely.
Also, I love Voronoi diagrams. I ran across them many moons ago when I was building a wayfinding application and was looking for ways to generate map meshes—this was not that—but I thought they were super interesting.
I am in love with the so-so reviews they happily places on the homepage of the airport: https://www.mataverinternational.com/ - "It's a small airport with just one place to eat and a few store to buy stuff." Truth in advertising lives!
What I thought was curious about this airport was that yes, it is indeed very small and very basic (the departure lounge included outdoor seating overlooking the tarmac - a small waist-high fence separating you from the apron), but the flights in and out were on brand new 787s!
Easter Island really does feel very remote though. Even though the 787s are jam-packed with tourists, you're flying due-west from Chile for 6 hours to a tiny spec in the middle of the pacific. The in-flight map was mostly just entirely blank the whole time since the island itself is so tiny it didn't really show up!
In the museum there they had some really interesting exhibits about how the original inhabitants used interesting navigation aids to find land - e.g. looking for the directions birds were flying or sea-turtles were swimming, or the sea swell etc. Fascinating stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation#Navigati...
787 can land because the airstrip there is really long (more than 3Kms according to wikipedia. This airport was chosen by NASA at some point as an emergency landing stop for the shuttle, and paid for it's extension.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mataveri_International_Airport
Also, I love Voronoi diagrams. I ran across them many moons ago when I was building a wayfinding application and was looking for ways to generate map meshes—this was not that—but I thought they were super interesting.