I booked my hotel on Easter Island over email from the mainland, with little to go on but its rudimentary website. Besides, it was the only place I could afford to stay for eight nights in a row. It looked bad but certainly not that bad.

When we arrived, a guy wearing no shirt with straight, jet-black hair past his shoulders showed us to an outbuilding. He then motioned up the dizzyingly steep staircase. Our bedroom, above his on the ground floor, had a small bathroom and a TV with rabbit ears. It didn’t work.

Another outbuilding had a guest kitchen where one night I met a family of four that was traveling around the world. I offered to wash their dishes so the parents could eat with their kids before the pasta got cold. “When you get to be a parent, you’ll realize you don’t eat hot food anymore,” the dad said. I decided to just come back later to make the instant chicken soup I was planning to eat for dinner.

In the mornings, most of the guests would gather in the main house for breakfast. Every day it was exactly the same, a couple of thick, cold pancakes served with jam. Giant thermoses of hot water sat on the table for making tea or instant coffee. Everyone in Chile drinks instant coffee unless they’re drinking watery espresso served near boiling in a dingy cafe con piernas in Santiago. It is not a good country for coffee drinkers, and the Ana Rapu hotel is even worse.