Lat-Am places-to-stay – what can I say?!

Ok folks… time to share my impressions of the places we stayed at during our January trip through Latin America…

Overall, everything was excelente! The only trickiness came on the Inca Trail: we had to spend the cold nights in sleeping bags in tents, but, given the lack of hotels up there, what else could we do? Still, the amazing huge meals we were served on the Trail made up the tents thing; but back to the excelente bits…

Naturally, in urban locations, we tried to stay in decent places – if there were rooms available: unfortunately, we only made the final decision to go on our LatAm-2025 trip about a month earlier, so accommodation wasn’t always available (also: permits to climb Huayna Picchu, next to Machu Picchu, were already sold out). The moral: book everything well in advance!

In both urban and even rural areas you can find quite decent places to stay. Here, for example, is the courtyard of our hotel in Cusco, in the Spanish colonial style:

En route from Cusco toward the Inca Trail, we had lunch at a huge, popular restaurant to which hungry travelers are bused in. It’s called Don Angel Inka Casona Restaurant (here) – and it’s a goody (in case you ever pass by here, dear readers:) ->

One of the most common local dishes (“local” = Andean, meaning not just in Peru) is… guinea pig! Called “kui” here, you often come across fast-food cafes here serving it and it alone – usually on wooden skewers ->

Here’s our modest 2* (sic?!) hotel in Ollantaytambo:

The rooms are really quite decent, and the flower garden outside is lush:

Here’s my hotel room in the small town of Uyuni:

In the capitals, of course, there are proper multi-star hotels with spas and pools (though we didn’t have time for them). Here’s our hotel in La Paz:

But the coolest place we stayed at, based on a combination of factors, was the high-altitude Tayka del Desierto hotel (~4600 meters above sea-level!) ->

Here it is on Google Maps:

As you can see, it’s situated in the middle of the desert. By the way, it’s just 2km from the Bolivia-Chile border.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: the internet tells fibs about this being the highest-altitude hotel in the world. That’s simply not true – and I should know: I’ve stayed overnight in a hotel 500 meters higher – in the Nepalese village of Gorakshep, which sits at ~5160 meters above sea-level. So that just goes to show: don’t believe everything you read on the internet! // But you can believe me :)

Now, back to Tayka del Desierto… Let’s take a closer look at it from the perspective of a very tired but still very curious tourist….

Arriving:

Everything looks quite unassuming – even a bit gray, plain and modest. But we’re far from civilization, and anyway, we’re used to that and also exhausted and so not fussy – we just needed to get to a pillow and pass out. So we don’t complain at all; quite the opposite (at least we made it!)…

Parking the car and unloading our bags:

But there’s hope – based on the design of the parking lot! ->

Checking in at reception in the lobby – the only place with any kind of Wi-Fi in the hotel:

A satellite dish found in the back, which apparently doesn’t work, but the clothespins on it suggest it’s still somewhat useful ->

Aha, a stairway leading somewhere labeled “restaurant”:

What’s inside? Well, modest, but it’ll do (Stolichnaya even!)! The parking lot didn’t deceive us :) ->

Cozy! ->:

Another glimpse of our forthcoming comfortable setting for dinner that evening:

This is how they bake delicious pastries here:

Fully checked in, we head to our rooms…

Oh! Pretty darn amazing! ->

Come evening – dinner. We take a window table, before realizing they’re all window tables :) ->

The sunset approaches – with the sunlight bathing everything in gold: just stunning! ->

In closing, a few dawn drone shots from early-bird DZ:

That’s all for now folks. Back soon!…

The best photos from our LatAm-2025 trip are here.