The Atypical Hotel

The hotel that comes with endless surprises at a daily basis.

One of the sections of the hotel, with rooms both on the first and second floors.

This hotel, was the not the classic hotel you stumble upon in any country. The hotel Casona de Yucay is located in Plaza Manco II, 104, Yucay, Urubamba, Cusco, Peru. This hotel in the Sacred Valley, was inconceivably good. The hotel’s food had tremendously good quality, including different types of food including meats, soup, fish, etc. It also had a satisfying lobby, an open field, etc., but I am here to talk about the fascinating activities such as: playing sports in their open field, the salt pools in Maras, Machu Picchu, etc., that you can do there. There are a huge amount of amusing, entertaining, activities. There is a huge, beautiful glacier named Salkantay, overlooking the front side of the hotel. It is the gorgeous view that you get every single time you wake up in the Casona de Yucay. The activities are as fun as spending time with your friends in the Jockey Plaza, but just that in a different way and also fifty times better. The three activities that I will be talking about are the following: painting the pottery, the enjoyable things that you can do during your free-time, and listening about how the local people color the clothing, and buying their products.

The gorgeous view you get every time you walk outside of your room.

The first activity that we did, was painting the pottery with size 6 paintbrushes. It was very interesting, yet hard. It took a lot of hand-conducted focus. It was difficult to paint between the lines of the design given on the pottery, because there was already a specific design they had given us on the pottery, and we just had to fill it in and decorate it a little. Sweat would drip down my forehead, almost hitting the pottery itself. The pottery at the end was miserable-looking. The wet paint was dripping all over the pottery, yet the rainbow colors looked beautiful beside the lines of the design given to us. Overall, it was a extremely unique experience, getting to learn and feel how the local people painted the pottery, although it seems surprisingly simple.

This was the view from my hotel room, although you needed to open the door. There were no windows in the rooms on the side that would face this part.

The second activity that I will talk about, is the free-time activities that you can do right in the hotel’s 30 yard long backyard, literally. There was an astonishing quantity of things that you could do to entertain yourself. There was a ping-pong table, with balls and paddles included. You could also bring a football and even play a pickup game of 2-hand touch. You could be running, trying to score a touchdown: panting, and exhausted. It was extremely entertaining to play in the dark starting a 6:00 p.m because that’s when it started getting dark, and you’re as blind as a bat. That is what makes it fun though right?

These were a couple of the ladies who came on one of the days to sell some clothing.

The third and final activity that I will talk about is the fabric class. They showed you several different ways they color of their clothing and their faces for rituals, for example, they used the blood from a small insect for the color red, and it was truly intriguing. The way they would just show you the colors dripping off of the clothing, explaining how they made the colors, was a very appealing experience. They would color the clothing right in front of your eyes in the hotels backyard. When they explained some of the nasty ways that they made some of the fabric colors (which I will not spoil), the girls would scream with such a deafening volume, anyone’s ears could have ruptured with a great, immense, injury. Several of the colors that they showed us were nearly as dark as coal, and not all of them were black, but some were also very dark tones of red, blue, green, etc. Overall, the third activity was one of the most interesting and unique moments of the whole trip.

The walk towards the lobby, which was also connected to the diner where we would usually eat.

This hotel, couldn’t have been a nicer non-stereotypical hotel experience. The Casona de Yucay, couldn’t have been any more entertaining than it was. The explosive running in their backyard playing football or ping-pong, the unique and compelling lesson about the coloring of local fabrics, and painting the difficult, concentrating, local-styled pottery. In all, this hotel brings an extremely, unique, and a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will be in your memory for a long time, for sure.