Enjoy an island getaway in the North Atlantic to Portugal's Azores and Madeira.

All the Portuguese like to go there to the beach, to enjoy the good weather because you have good weather all the year round,

and if you like nature, it's the perfect place to go.

Or visit one of the most remote islands in the world.

James Grant Peterkin got to know the people and language of Easter Island in the South

Pacific. If you arrive by ship from Chile, it's a voyage that'll take five days. Suddenly an island

appears in front of you and you get some kind of sense of what the first settlers on Easter Island

would have experienced when they first saw it. And consider how resilient a society can be when it includes a variety of languages and cultures.

Ross Perlin suggests that revitalizing languages can open new perspectives into our shared history.

With the loss of biodiversity, there is the related loss of linguistic diversity.

There's a real connection.

Come with us for the hour ahead on Travel with Rick Steves.

There's just something about an island, and that's where we're headed today on Travel with Rick

Steve's. James Grant-Peterkin became one of the few outsiders to learn the language of Rapa Nui.

He takes us behind the mysteries of hundreds of large stone figures on Easter Island,

and he tells us what it's like to live today on one of the most remote islands of the South Pacific.

And Ross Perlin from the Endangered Language Alliance reminds us what we all stand to gain as a society

when we encourage people

to speak more than one language.

Let's start today's travel with Rick Steves on two small island chains in the North Atlantic

that lie some five to 900 miles from the coast of Portugal.

About a third of the way between Lisbon and Boston, you'll find the Portuguese island group called the Azores.

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