Many of the islanders I met seemed, at best, weary of outsiders. This struck me as partially due to the general Chilean attitude toward foreigners, but it likely also comes from the fact that everyone that comes to Easter Island does so as an amateur ethnographer, poised like Jared Diamond to tell the Rapa Nui what they did wrong hundreds of years ago.

It surprised me when the sushi chef at Kotaro struck up a conversation. His wife, who worked the front of the house, soon joined in the small talk. Suddenly I was weary of them. But the food was so fresh and so good, and this was most certainly the nicest restaurant I’d found on the island, a cozy, quiet spot that I could actually afford, filled with tourists speaking Japanese. I imagined they were trading tips about which statues to see but really who knows what they were saying.

We went back a few more times, to eat and to use the internet connection. As I uploaded pictures and sent emails, I wondered how much it cost to ship one of those clear, bar-top fish chillers to the island from Santiago. I didn’t ask the chef, but he probably would have told me.